Opnext (News - Alert), Inc. and Ixia announced the successful demonstration of 100 Gigabit Ethernet or GbE traffic using the Ixia (News - Alert) K2 traffic generator and analyzer and Opnext’s 100GBASE-LR4 CFP Multi-Source Agreement compliant optical module.

This successful 100 GbE transmission confirms the interoperability of the CFP MSA standard and the IEEE (News - Alert) 802.3ba draft standard across multiple products and platforms. Ixia and Opnext have already verified their 100 GbE CFP MSA products for transmitting and receiving GbE packets at a demonstration hosted by Juniper Networks (News - Alert), according to company sources.
 

In a release Unmesh Agarwal, vice president of engineering, Core Business Unit, Juniper Networks said that, in alignment with the company’s vision for “The New Network,” Juniper is leading the development and testing of 100 GbE hardware for high performance networks, supported by an open, flexible and secure infrastructure.
 

“We are excited to work with Opnext and Ixia to establish an industry leading, standards-based Ethernet technology that meets the rapidly growing bandwidth requirements of next generation networks,” Agarwal said.
 

Tadayuki Kanno, president of Opnext’s module business unit said that Opnext is instrumental in the development of industry standards for optical communication and module form factors. Opnext advanced laser diode and photodiode technology, proven by Opnext 40Gbps products, now delivers 100 GbE performances well beyond the IEEE draft standard.
 

Commenting on this achievement by Opnext and Ixia, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Ixia, Errol Ginsberg, said that 40 and 100 GbE are the next steps for Ethernet speeds in the data center and across the Internet. Also test and measurement solutions have to be robust for the successful deployment of 100 GbE networks.
 

The Ixia K2 traffic generator and analyzer offer a flexible, robust test platform for deployment of 100 Gigabit Ethernet networks. Also this testing module can validate IEEE P802.3ba standard-based products. K2 modules generate and analyze full 40 GE and 100 GE layer 2-7 line rate traffic, support unframed bit error ratio tests or BERT, as well as validation of the defined physical medium dependent sub layers in the EEE802.3ba standard.
 

Company officials said that the Opnext, TRC5E20ENF, CFP MSA compliant module also supports the 100GBASE-LR4 interface in the IEEE draft 100 Gigabit Ethernet standard. The Opnext CFP MSA module is under sampling and available to customers. Opnext and Ixia plan to conduct a live demonstration of this technology during the upcoming OFC/NFOEC event in San Diego.