Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) says it has trialed both line-side and client-side 100-Gbps transmission over Pacific Crossing’s PC-1 submarine cable network. The trial, conducted in both directions across a 9,500-km undersea link between the U.S. and Japan, tested elements of Infinera’s flagship DTN and its recently announced DTN-X packet optical transport platform.
On the client side, Infinera and Pacific Crossing, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications Corp., transmitted 100-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) traffic via 40-Gbps optical channels using the DTN platform with the company’s FlexCoherent capabilities. FlexCoherent is designed to enable network planners to vary modulation formats as link needs demand. According to Mark Showalter, senior director, marketing at Infinera, and Infinera Fellow Steve Grubb, the DTN leveraged its recently announced 40-Gbps optical line module (see “Infinera: Hey, we updated the DTN, too”) to provision the 100GbE traffic across multiple 40-Gbps optical channels. While this implies that the bandwidth in one of the 40-Gbps channels was only partially utilized, the Infinera sources said this unused bandwidth could be devoted to another traffic stream.
On the line side, Infinera sent a 100-Gbps optical channel across the PC-1 link using a polarization multiplexed binary phase-shift keying (PM-BPSK) modulation format paired with coherent detection, also enabled via the FlexCoherent technology. The signal also benefited from the soft decision forward error correction (SD FEC) capabilities the company plans to use on the upcoming DTN-X platform (see “Infinera debuts DTN-X packet-optical transport platform with 500G PIC, OTN/MPLS support”).
“Customer demand for transpacific bandwidth continues to grow,” Takahiro Sumimoto, CEO at Pacific Crossing, was quoted as saying in Infinera’s announcement of the trial. “We are delighted to work with Infinera to demonstrate 100-gigabit transmission on our existing subsea fiber plant. We are also pleased that our leading transpacific network capabilities contributed to the successful demonstration of this new technology.”
The PC-1 trials follow other high-speed transmission trials with SEACOM in Africa (see “SEACOM demos 100-Gbps via Infinera 500-Gbps PIC”) and Interoute in Europe.
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