Steven Schnell sez:
FDDI is a finished standard and no more bandwidth upgrades are planned. Ethernet, however, is now in the gigabit range. It may be extended to operate in the multi-gigabit range, if the IEEE decides the frame format and the media access method will work at such speeds. Products based on GbE are in use today. A NAP can drop in one or two GbE switches, connect them to existing GIGAswitch/FDDIs, and scale (somewhat) from there. Come to NANOG this next week to see how this can be done.
See http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/beowulf/beowulf.html for an application of Packet Engine GbE. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433