Infinera and Level 3 Demo 100 Gigabit Ethernet Long Haul Transmission

A demonstration conducted by Finisar, Infinera, Internet2, Level 3 Communications, and University of California at Santa Cruz successfully transmitted a 100GbE signal from Tampa, Florida to Houston, Texas, and back again, over ten 10 Gbps channels through the Level 3 network. The transmission used an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. A single Xilinx FPGA implemented this packet numbering scheme and electrically transmitted all ten signals to ten of Finisar's 10 Gbps XFP optical transceivers, which in turn converted the signals to optics. These signals were then transmitted to an Infinera DTN DWDM system and handed off to Infinera systems within the Level 3 network where it was transmitted across the Level 3 network to Houston and back.



The pre-standard specification for 100GbE guaranteed the ordering of the packets and quality of the signal across 10 Gbps wavelengths.

Infinera, which is showcasing the technology at this week's SC06 International Conference in Tampa, said the experiment demonstrated that it is possible for carriers to offer 100GbE services across today's 10 Gbps infrastructure..



"100 Gigabit Ethernet will be a critical technology to accommodate bandwidth growth, and this demonstration shows that we have the capability to implement this as a super-lambda service over today's networks," said Infinera co-founder and CTO Drew Perkins.



Infinera noted that the largest IP backbones are currently using multiple 10 Gbps links between core sites, and will soon demand 100 Gbps connections to increase their capacity to keep up with fast-growing bandwidth demand. The company predicts that service providers will prefer to support 100 Gigabit Ethernet links using their current transport network infrastructures.

http://www.infinera.comhttp://sc06.supercomputing.org