This month, the IEEE’s 802.3 committee is due to hold its second vote on the IBM Corp-developed technology for running Fast Ethernet over Category 3 untwisted shielded pair wiring. The committee has already voted on it once, and as a result, certain amendments have been made, although the underlying basis of the technology was found to be stable. The technology, which will be known as 100Base-T2, has already passed the ballot at the Task Force level, and if it passes through the 802.3 committee successfully, is expected to be voted on by the local network-Metropolitan Area Network standards committee sometime before the end of the year. Scott Carter, chairman of the IEEE T2 comm-ittee, says he is confident the standard is now stable enough that manufacturers can start developing products based on it, and he believes several chip vendors have already started.
