Chalk Talk: What Is FlexEthernet (FlexE)?

Sebastien Gareau, Hardware Systems Architect at Ciena, talks about the industry effort to introduce flexibility at the Ethernet service layer.

FlexEthernet, also called FlexE, was originally conceived to meet the challenges of Internet Content Providers (ICPs), to provide higher capacity and flexible data center interconnect (DCI).

FlexE has been defined in the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) as a way to ensure wide support of Ethernet rates that don't correspond exactly to existing physical interfaces.

Sebastien Gareau details how this is done, as well as three use cases for FlexE in today's networks: Network Bonding, Sub-Rating, and Channelization.

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