Global Internet traffic is expected to grow 32% per year from 2010 to 2015. In 2010, an average of 46 terabits/second traveled over the Internet and should surpass 199 terabits/second in 2015. But while IP traffic is growing exponentially, the budgets for network equipment are growing at less than 10%.

John D'Ambrosia, Chief Ethernet Evangelist in the CTO Office at Dell (he came onboard when Dell bought Force10), is a founder of the Ethernet Alliance and currently serving as its chairman. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with D'Ambrosia for an update on the Alliance and Ethernet advances.

Brocade this week is looking to simplify the campus edge with two additions to its ICX switch line and plans to more easily mix and match ICX switches in and between stacks.

Apple has refreshed its iMac desktop line, which now sport Intel's second-generation quad-core processors and the new Thunderbolt connectivity technology that debuted in February on the company's MacBook Pro laptops.

Myricom, a pioneer in high performance computing that has shifted its focus to more mainstream networking applications in recent years, has named co-founder Nan Boden as its new president and CEO.

Dell entered the Fibre Channel over Ethernet market last week with OEM deals from Brocade and QLogic and endorsed 10Gigabit Ethernet as a customer's technology of choice.

The speed of your network affects nearly every device on your home network, whether it be a home-theater PC, an external storage device, or a gaming console. For most networks, the transfer rate of a faster ethernet connection (roughly 12.5 megabits per second) is the typical speed limit. That may be okay for transferring ordinary files, but it's painfully slow if you're trying to back up a PC to a network device, for example, or to stream a high-definition movie to your living room.

Ethernet continues to go places its inventors probably never imagined.