Lots of progress on the optical front at this week’s OFC/NFOEC forum in San Diego. One of the more notable tech advances at the show is a 100 Gigabit Ethernet interop demo passing traffic between a Juniper router and an Infinera optical transport platform using the IEEE 802.3ba 100GBASE-LR4 draft standard. Also part of the demo: Finisar and Opnext, providing pluggable 100Gb/s transceivers, and Exfo and Ixia, providing test sets to generate the 100GigE traffic. The interoperability demo shows the potential to help drive down the costs of 100GigE deployments — still a bleeding-edge technology — by ensuring routers, switches and optical transport gear from different vendors can work together.
From the Infinera press release on the demo:
The demo, using a prototype 100 Gigabit Ethernet tributary interface module deployed on Infinera’s DTN System, brings 100GigE technology significantly closer to real-world implementation. Infinera’s demonstrations use 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) pluggable CFP optical transceiver modules which are available today. The Infinera DTN 100 Gigabit Ethernet tributary interface module in this demonstration is the latest prototype and is fully compliant with the most recent IEEE 802.3ba draft specification.
Connected Planet’s Take, Rich Karpinski:
Look for lots of 100GigE developments this week, as the optical industry pushes beyond early trials and promises more commercial and standards-based gear supporting 100G networking. Among other developments to keep an eye on this week from OFC/NFOEC:
- Corning is showing the capability of its long-haul optical products — working with 40G and 100G transport systems from Ciena — to deliver traffic over longer spans without regeneration (including a 12-span network spanning 1500 kilometers).
- Nokia Siemens Networks launched a new OTN switch with capacity from 1.2 Tb/s to more than 20 Tb/s with 100G line interfaces, while also demonstrating a new transport platform, the hiT 7300 coherent 40 Gb/s transponder.
- Meanwhile, on the component front, Broadcom debuted new 10G physical layer transceivers designed in 65 nanometer process technology; JDSU expanded its family of reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and tunable XFP optical products; and NeoPhotonics announced the initial availability of its Integrated Coherent Receiver (ICR) for 100 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s transmission systems.
That’s our take on this. Let us know what you think in the comments section below: