Industry NewsDecember 16, 2025
2026 Ethernet Roadmap
The Ethernet Alliance 2026 Ethernet Roadmap sets a new course for connectivity. Refreshed roadmap defines Ethernet’s evolving role in AI, automotive, and next-generation connectivity, spotlighting emerging trends shaping tomorrow’s networks.
Ethernet for AI. (All images property of Ethernet Alliance).
The Ethernet Alliance, a global consortium dedicated to the continued success and advancement of Ethernet technologies, has announced the public release of its 2026 Ethernet Roadmap. Initially debuted during TEF 2025: Ethernet for AI, it highlights the technologies, trends, and breakthroughs set to define the next era of high-performance, AI-driven networking.
Ethernet is evolving to meet AI’s insatiable appetite for speed and scale. The latest Ethernet Roadmap shows how upgrades like 1.6 Terabits per second (Tb/s) interfaces, Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO), improved copper and fiber options, and energy-efficient designs will facilitate growth in AI, cloud services, business, automotive, manufacturing, and edge computing.
“A half-century down the road, Ethernet has reached its next turning point,” said Peter Jones, chair, Ethernet Alliance. “The 2026 Ethernet Roadmap shows how Ethernet is staying ahead of network changes, delivering the correct mix of performance, power, and flexibility as AI becomes central to what we do every day.”
The 2026 Ethernet Roadmap highlights a deepening convergence as hyperscalers adopt 100G–800G interconnects, telcos roll out advanced optical transport for 5G and AI, and enterprises transition to 2.5G/5G/10G BASE-T with higher-speed optical uplinks to support next-gen Wi-Fi and AI-enabled workplaces.
The roadmap also outlines the increasing use of automotive Ethernet in software-defined vehicles, the arrival of Wi-Fi 7 and 8, and how industrial networks are changing with time-sensitive networking (TSN), BASE-T1 PHYs, and combined 5G/Wi-Fi/Ethernet systems that enable automation in real time.
As global electricity needs rise, the 2026 Ethernet Roadmap emphasizes the industry’s concentration on more bandwidth per watt, better optics, and new cooling and power-management, each a key to responsibly growing AI and facilitating Ethernet’s continued expansion and advancement.
Unveiled first and exclusively at TEF 2025: Ethernet for AI, the 2026 Ethernet Roadmap is now publicly available for download at the Ethernet Alliance website: https://bit.ly/EA-2026EthernetRoadmap.
Highlights of 2026 Roadmap
How Ethernet speeds have increased since 1980.
Total throughput (data rate) may be achieved in three general ways: (1) Aggregating multiple lanes; (2) Increasing the per lane bit rate; (3) Increasing the bits transferred per sample (Baud) . This chart shows how multiple lanes can be used to generate similar speeds. The per lane speed times the number of lanes determines the total link speed.
Path to Single Lane
Signaling Method Transitions: Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) used for 25Gb/s per lane and below; Four level Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM4) for 50Gb/s per lane; Coherent signaling (both in-phase and quadrature modulation) for 100Gb/s per lane and above.
OPTICAL EVOLUTION: The ever-increasing demand for power efficiency in data centers is driving the transition to new levels of system and optics integration, such as Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), Co-Packaged Copper (CPC), and LPO/LRO. As data centers deploy higher and higher link speeds, the power consumption of SERDES links and the optical modules increase significantly. The need for reduced-power optical solutions is fueling innovation and creativity in this market. To meet diverse deployment needs, retimed, half-retimed, and linear optical modules each offer varying levels of signal processing and power efficiency to optimize performance across different network architectures.
PLUGGABLE MODULES: The current high-speed optical market is dominated by retimed optics, but there is rapidly growing interest in linear-based solutions for optical modules which dramatically reduce the module power consumption. Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO) /and Linear Receive Optics (LRO) are emerging techniques which remove all/some of the retiming circuitry found in traditional optics. These implementations utilize common pluggable form factors of QSFP, QSFP-DD, and OSFP and are primarily targeted at 400GbE and higher markets. A fully linear optical module can operate at around half of the power of a similar retimed device. LRO is a half-retimed solution which achieves some of the power reduction while providing a higher quality transmitted optical signal.
Download the 2026 Ethernet Roadmap
2026 Ethernet Roadmap
The 2026 Ethernet Roadmap is now publicly available for download at the Ethernet Alliance website: https://bit.ly/EA-2026EthernetRoadmap.