The 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10GbE or 10 GigE standard was first published in 2002 as IEEE Std 802.3ae-2002 and is the fastest of the Ethernet standards.
It defines a version of Ethernet with a nominal data rate of 10 Gbit/s, ten times as fast as Gigabit Ethernet.
Over the years the following 802.3 standards relating to 10GbE have been published: 802.3ae-2002 (fiber -SR, -LR, -ER and -LX4 PMDs), 802.3ak-2004 (-CX4 copper twin-ax InfiniBand type cable), 802.3an-2006 (10GBASE-T copper twisted pair), 802.3ap-2007 (copper backplane -KR and -KX4 PMDs) and 802.3aq-2006 (fiber -LRM PMD with enhanced equalization).
The 802.3ae-2002 and 802.3ak-2004 amendments have been consolidated into the IEEE 802.3-2005 standard.
The other amendments will be consolidated into IEEE Std 802.3-2008 which has not yet been published.
10 Gigabit Ethernet supports only full duplex links which can be connected by switches.
Half duplex operation and CSMA/CD (carrier sense multiple access with collision detect) are not supported in 10GbE.
Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10GE)