Facing the Challenges of Developing 100 Gbps Platforms

The communications infrastructure across the globe is being transformed to deliver any service, any where, at any time.

Consequently, services are being expanded, and the method for controlling these services is changing as the bandwidth required to deliver them is exploding due to ever-increasing video content.. Aging broadcast-based cable structures and circuit-based telecom structures are being systematically replaced with packet-based networks (IP and Ethernet). In addition, wireless access is presenting new complexity to the way consumers and businesses are accessing these networks


This paper will address the challenges of scaling packet networks from the current state-of-the-art, 10 Gbps limited packet-aware, to next generation 100 Gbps all packet-aware, any-to-any networks. The areas covered will include optical/electrical interfaces, interface adaptation, data plane processing, control plane processing, as well as switching, system power and printed circuit board requirements. These challenges apply to platforms that aggregate lower speed interfaces, up to 100 Gbps, as well as platforms with pure 100 Gbps interfaces.http://www.roadto100g.org/whitepaper.php