With more and more Ultrabook machines pushing Ethernet aside in favor of Wi-Fi, one has to wonder if Ethernet even has a future. But, of course it does! Enterprises and businesses aren't going to ditch the stability of a hard-wired connection in favor of flaky over-the-air alternatives, but with 802.11 taking off on the cordless front, where's the innovation in Ethernet? Here.s IEEE, the world's largest professional organization advancing technology for humanity, today announced formation of the IEEE 802.3 Industry Connections Higher Speed Ethernet Consensus group. Why was such a group formed? "To build consensus toward the development of the next speed of Ethernet. Potential participants include users and producers of systems and components for telecommunications carriers, Internet exchanges, financial markets, data centers, multiple system operators (MSOs) networking systems, high-performance computing, network storage and servers and other individuals interested in future IEEE 802.3 Ethernet wireline standards."That's a fancy way to say that the IEEE is pushing for a new Ethernet standard between 400Gbps and 1Tbps, which will obviously be needed once data centers begin the inevitable transition to NAND and Flash memories from HDDs. There's a meeting scheduled for next month to break down what happens next, but we wouldn't count on seeing the next generation of Ethernet in the coming year or anything. That said, it's good to know that those cable-to-cable transmissions will be faster a decade from now. Here you were thinking wires were forgotten.