Advantages of 10GbE

10 Gigabit Ethernet is the natural evolution of the well-established IEEE 802.3 standard in speed and distance. It extends Ethernet's proven value set and economics to metropolitan and wide area networks by providing:

• Potentially lowest total cost of ownership (infrastructure/operational/human capital)
• Straightforward migration to higher performance levels
• Proven multi-vendor and installed base interoperability (Plug and Play)
• Familiar network management feature set
• Supports all traffic types-data, voice and video over IP
• 10 Gigabit Ethernet does not obsolete current investments in network infrastructure
• Flexibility in network design
• Ability to support jumbo or large frame sizes to reduce the network overhead

The price-performance that the combination of Gigabit and 10G bring to customers is driving increasing adoption of 10G. In general as desktops become more powerful and applications more feature-rich, it generates a lot of data/content, which necessitates a more powerful transport infrastructure of which Gigabit and 10G networks are a prime example.
Some of the applications driving this technology are Web 2.0 applications typically with multimedia content. There are specific applications in banking and finance as well as CAD applications in the manufacturing sector. Media companies using animation and high-end graphics applications are the early adopters of 10G technology in the industry.
Chandra Kopparapu, Vice President for Asia Pacific at Foundry Networks, said, “10GbE enables the use of Ethernet for transporting data, voice and video traffic within an enterprise and a carrier’s network. With 10G, companies will have the capability to provide GbE service to workstations and, eventually, to the desktop in order to support applications such as streaming video, medical imaging, centralized applications, and high-end graphics. New and upcoming bandwidth-hungry applications like streaming video, medical imaging, centralized applications, and high-end graphics will drive 10GbE technology. Verticals like entertainment and animation have shown great interest in 10G.”

Extract from: Gigabit Ethernet and beyond