The Ethernet Alliance used OFC 2026 to make a practical case for Ethernet as the foundation for AI infrastructure. At its showcase on the show floor, member companies and technical leaders demonstrated live interoperability across 400G, 800G, and 1.6T Ethernet technologies, along with a range of optical approaches, test platforms, and emerging form factors. The common thread across the videos is straightforward: Ethernet’s value for AI networking does not rest on theory alone. It rests on working multi-vendor systems, standards progress, and repeated proof that the ecosystem can scale.
David Rodgers — Ethernet for AI — It Just Works
David Rodgers, Technical Business Development Manager at the Ethernet Alliance, opens the showcase with an overview of the Alliance’s OFC 2026 interoperability demonstrations. He points to a broad member lineup spanning switch vendors, interconnect suppliers, and test and measurement companies, all working together around Ethernet for AI use cases. Rodgers also highlights the variety of optical media under test, including hollow core, multi-core, and standard short single-mode fiber, while underscoring the central message from the booth: the ecosystem works together in practice.
John D’Ambrosia — Ethernet Evolves to Meet AI’s Massive Demands
John D’Ambrosia, Chair of the IEEE P802.3dj Task Force and Chair Emeritus of the Ethernet Alliance, places the OFC demonstrations in a standards and technology context. He discusses current 100G and 200G signaling, the near-completion of IEEE 802.3dj, and the industry’s path toward 400G signaling. His video frames AI as a major force behind Ethernet’s current pace of development, extending from electrical and optical chips to connectors, cabling, packaging, and thermal design.
Anabel Alarcon — AI Infrastructure Form Factors & Coherent Transceivers at OFC 2026
Anabel Alarcon, Product Line Manager at EXFO, focuses on the hardware choices emerging around AI infrastructure and coherent optics. She walks through OSFP-RHS as a compact form factor aimed at dense GPU-to-switch environments, then shifts to coherent pluggables including 400 SR, 400 SR Plus, 800 SR, and QSFP2-800 SR. Her demo also shows live interoperability testing over an 80-kilometer (49.7-mile) fiber spool, illustrating how coherent modules and DSP-based designs are being validated across vendors.
Keith Cole — Why Testing Ensures Market Success
Keith Cole, GM and VP of Product Marketing at VeEX, explains the work required behind the scenes to make live interoperability look simple on the show floor. As a tech lead for the Ethernet Alliance interop effort, he describes the long planning cycle, recurring coordination, and hot-stage validation needed to bring 800G and 1.6T Ethernet demonstrations together. His point is that “plug and play” outcomes in the field depend on rigorous joint testing long before products reach deployment.
Vijay Murthy — Multi-Vendor Ethernet Fabric Proving AI Workloads at Scale
Vijay Murthy, Senior Technical Product Manager at Keysight Technologies, presents a multi-vendor Ethernet fabric built to emulate AI training and inferencing traffic. The demo includes switching systems from Arista, HPE, and Cisco, along with traffic generation and protocol analysis tools that show live behavior across the network. Murthy’s segment makes the case that Ethernet can support demanding AI workloads when validated across an integrated ecosystem of switching, test, and interconnect technologies.
Peter Jones — Ethernet’s Critical Role for AI Infrastructure
Peter Jones, Chair of the Ethernet Alliance, steps back to address the larger infrastructure challenge created by AI. He describes pressure across the supply chain for chips, power, and fiber, and argues that Ethernet now faces one of the biggest scaling tests in its history. His presentation emphasizes that there is no shortcut around collaboration, and that Ethernet remains the most credible connectivity framework for meeting AI’s rapidly expanding infrastructure requirements.
Dave Estes — 1.6 Terabit Ethernet Demos
Dave Estes, Hardware Engineer at VIAVI, closes the technical walkthroughs with a detailed look at the live 1.6T Ethernet demonstrations at the Ethernet Alliance booth. He highlights 200G per-lane technology, automated link training, and a wide mix of optical and copper interconnect approaches, including DSP-based optics, LPO, LRO, and coherent links. The demo brings together equipment from switch vendors and test platforms across the booth, showing how the industry is turning 1.6T Ethernet from roadmap language into operational interop.
It Just Works
The final short video condenses the entire showcase into one message delivered by multiple Ethernet Alliance participants: reliability still matters most. With perspectives from Keith Cole, Peter Jones, Tim Crawley, David Rodgers, Anabel Alarcon, Vijay Murthy, and Dave Estes, the clip reinforces the core theme that ran through the OFC 2026 booth demonstrations. For AI infrastructure planners evaluating high-speed Ethernet, optics, and interop maturity, the takeaway is simple and direct: It Just Works.
