Is your Ethernet fast enough Four new speeds are in the works

Work is also beginning on a 50Gbps specification, which could be the next speed offered for linking servers in data centers. Both servers and high-performance flash storage systems will drive a need for something more than 25Gbps in the biggest data centers in a few years, Weckel of Dell'Oro said.

At Thursday's event, attendees debated whether to seek a 50Gbps standard or go all the way to a single-lane system for 100Gbps. A 50Gbps specification is more within reach, said Chris Cole, director of transceiver engineering at Finisar. For a 100Gbps standard today, "you're pushing the components," Cole said. He expects to see standard 50Gbps products starting in 2016.

3. 2.5-Gigabit

It may not sound very fast, but 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet might help companies fill their buildings with very fast Wi-Fi. It's being proposed specifically as a tool to help enterprises' wired infrastructure keep up with wireless access points that increasingly form the edge of those networks.

The latest Wi-Fi technology, IEEE 802.11ac, can operate at more than 1Gbps -- much more, with certain configurations. With that much traffic going over the air, the Gigabit Ethernet links that most enterprises use to connect their access points to the wired network could become a bottleneck, said Kamal Dalmia, vice president of sales and marketing at Aquantia.