Ethernet’s future is about much more than the next top speed: The engineers charting a path for the ubiquitous networking protocol are looking at several new versions to serve a variety of applications.

At a meeting last Thursday of the Ethernet Alliance, an industry group that promotes IEEE Ethernet standards, three major new projects were up for discussion.

To meet immediate demands in cloud data centers, there’s a standard in the works for 25Gbps (bits per second). For the kinds of traffic expected in those clouds a few years from now, experts are already discussing a 50Gbps specification. And for enterprises with new, fast Wi-Fi access points, there may soon be 2.5Gbps Ethernet. That’s in addition to the next top speed for carrier backbones and moves to adapt the technology for use in cars.

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