The growing demand for streaming video and cloud-based gaming prompted the Ethernet Technology Consortium to announce a new 800 Gigabit Ethernet standard, rebranding itself in the process.

Up until this point, the standards body had called itself the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium. Originally established to develop specifications for 25, 50, and 100 Gbps Ethernet, the name was changed "to reflect a new focus on faster Ethernet technologies. The first of these was 800GbE.

This new specification is actually rooted in the 400GbE standard, reused with slight modifications to essentially double the speed. It would be like doubling the number of lanes on an existing highway to accommodate twice the traffic.

You can read the full specification (PDF) if you really want to. Just be prepared for several pages of technical obfuscation.

As it applies to consumers, this will have no direct impact on your PC now or in the near future. Most home PCs support 1GbE LANs, and 10GbE is available, but it is expensive to deploy. In other words, 800GbE is a long way off.

Indirectly, however, it could reduce the burden on servers and other network infrastructure in the future and ultimately improve a variety of online services. It is worth noting that dozens of companies, including Broadcom, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft, are members of the standards body,