With the ratification of new industry standards and increased demands on datacenter throughput, 40/100G Ethernet will be an integral component of thenext generation data center. In fact, it is already an emerging influence on howorganizations plan, build and operate their existing data center architectures.In this paper, we will discuss the deep impact that this networkspeed transition has on data center cabling infrastructure, and the decisions thatorganizations will need to make to accommodate these changes.