Others said both elements come into play. The two work hand in hand, according to David Stauffer, chairman of the Physical and Link Layer Working Group at the Optical Interoperability Forum, who spoke at the conference.

Though researchers may develop new, faster technologies, vendors can't reach consensus on them until they're confident that the components can be manufactured for a reasonable price, Stauffer said. A component that can be made in a lab and demonstrated may not be feasible to manufacture in large volumes, he said.

Demand for bandwidth is growing especially fast in virtualized data centers, where high server utilization is driving companies to deploy 10-Gigabit Ethernet links to top-of-rack switches, said Dell'Oro Group analyst Alan Weckel. Aggregating all that data will require 100-Gigabit uplinks from switches, which some enterprises are clamoring for, and Terabit Ethernet data-center backbones, Weckel said. Terabit Ethernet isn't even in development yet, though some large entities, , have said they need it.

Weckel doesn't think the industry can stay more than two or three years ahead of the need for speed. Though greater leaps may be technically possible, often they aren't economical, he said.

However, work toward new Ethernet standards is moving steadily forward. The IEEE 802.3 100-Gigabit Backplane and Copper Cable Study Group is on track to get a task force formed to solve the problems it is defining, said John D'Ambrosia, who is chairman of the study group. That task force in the backplanes that provide connections within a switch. If all goes well, the IEEE will approve the task force in September, D'Ambrosia said.