An Ecosystem Forms to Drive 400G Forward

The next big step on the relentless march forward for Ethernet is 400 Gbit/s. This week's OFC in Los Angeles brought a flurry of activity around 400 Gbit/s and finally we are seeing efforts come together from across a broad ecosystem of module vendors, chip suppliers, test and measurement companies, network equipment suppliers, telecom companies and Internet content providers. As with previous generations, the 400 Gigabit Ethernet will appear in...

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OFS Carries 200G over 4,500 km with TeraWave Fiber

OFS, a designer, manufacturer and supplier of fibre optic network products and solutions, announced it is showcasing the capacity and un-regenerated reach of Nokia's 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) C+L-band DWDM system over OFS TeraWave ULL fibre, enabling reduced cost-per-bit of transport across the ultra-long haul distances between hyper-scale data centres. TeraWave ULL fibre is claimed to offer the largest available effective area for a terrestrial...

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Nokia and Facebook Test Trans-Atlantic Optimization

Nokia and Facebook announced they have collaborated on field trials of new optical digital signal processing technologies over a 5,500 km trans-Atlantic link between New York and Ireland. To help address increasing demand for capacity on subsea fibre networks, Nokia and Facebook tested Nokia Bell Labs' new probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) technology. The companies stated that the trial achieved an increase of almost 2.5x in capacity compared...

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Finisar Shows 400, 200 and 100G Pluggables

Finisar, a major supplier of subsystems and components for fibre optic communications, announced multiple optics product and technology demonstrations at OFC, including new 400 Gbit/s CFP8 FR8 and LR8 transceiver, 200 Gbit/s QSFP56 FR4 and LR4 transceiver and a 100 Gbit/s QSFP28 eSR4 extended reach transceiver modules. The company will also demonstrate its new Flexgrid single low-profile wavelength selective switch (WSS) for next generation ROADM...

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Oclaro Announces 1 Tbit/s Dual Wavelength PM-QMZ External Modulator

Oclaro announced that it has expanded its lithium niobate (LiNbO3) portfolio with a dual wavelength PM-QMZ external modulator for data rates up to 1 Tbit/s and that at OFC it is hosting an interoperability demonstration showcasing a 100 Gbit/s ER4-Lite QSFP28 and CFP2 over 40 km single-mode optical fibre (SMF). New PM-QMZ modulator The new dual wavelength PM-QMZ modulator joins Oclaro's established high-bandwidth single carrier PM-QMZ (polarisation...

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Fujitsu Intros Access-agnostic Virtual Access Network for SMBs

Fujitsu Network Communications has introduced its Virtual Access Network (VAN) solution, designed to address the cost and time barriers for small-to-medium business (SMB) service deployment by eliminating the need for purpose-built routing devices and manual provisioning and allowing the use of any access technology to deliver services, and will showcase the solution at OFC 2017. Fujitsu noted that SD-WAN and access services can be cost-prohibitive...

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Corning and Kaiam Demo CoPPhI

Kaiam, a privately-held developer of hybrid photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology, and Corning announced they are showcasing an optical engine and single-mode fibre interface connector designed to be co-packaged with a 12.8 Tbit/s switch chip at the 2017 OFC in Los Angeles. The companies stated that by converting high-speed signals to optical within the switch package, the high-density engine based on co-packaged photonic interconnect (CoPPhI)...

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Nistica unveils FLEXBOX grid-flexible, disaggregated ROADM

Nistica, a Fujikura subsidiary and supplier agile optical networking solutions, has unveiled FLEXBOX, a disaggregated ROADM node designed for next-generation software defined networks (SDN), and plans to work with existing system vendor customers to deliver the product to carriers and webscale end customers. Offered in single rack unit (1 RU) form-factors, Nistica's products are designed to enable broadcast-and-select and route-and-select architectures...

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