In case you missed it, Ethernet is celebrating its 40th birthday thanks to its founder Bob Metcalfe.

Over the past 40 years, Ethernet has been evolving and has been re-invented, although the name has stuck. Much time has been spent trying to decide what the word Ethernet means. It seems quite a few agree that it has become a brand - a promise of openness and interoperability, high speed and low cost.

At the Ethernet Innovation Summit, a group of cloud vendors and users launched the CloudEthernet Forum, which has the backing of Alcatel Lucent, Juniper Networks (News - Alert), Tata Communications and Citrix, among others.

The CloudEthernet Forum aims to make Ethernet better suited to large-scale cloud services that may operate across many data centers. One of the limitations that Ethernet runs into on clouds is a cap on the number of virtual LANs that can be set up on one network, with a limit of approximately 4,000. If there are thousands of customers hosted in a service provider's data center, Ethernet VLAN limits will fall short, leaving some Ethernet storage standards in need of adjustments.

The Forum's founders have not shown support for any specific standard development or modification as of yet, but the group may ask the IEEE (News - Alert) to modify its standards.

Noticeably absent from the group's list of membership is Cisco Systems, which organizers say they have had communications with. Anyone can join for an annual fee of $15,000. MEF (News - Alert) members can join for $10,000.

"It is great that the original idea of Ethernet is something that is so flexible, adaptable and extensible that it's been able to remain current and relevant," said James Walker, president of the CloudEthernet Forum.

The trail was blazed for cloud Ethernet 10 to 15 years ago when the technology was first adapted to WANs and the Metro Ethernet Forum (News - Alert) was launched, having bridged the telechasm, if you will, from LAN to WAN.