5 June 2002 -- At SuperComm 2002 in Atlanta, GA, USA the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance (10GEA) unveiled the world's largest 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) network.
The 200+ km end-to-end network comprised of 20 network devices and pieces of equipment, including systems, test equipment, components, fibre optic and cabling, from 15 companies: Agilent Technologies Inc, Cable Design Technologies (CDT), Cisco Systems, Corning Inc, Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks, Force10 Networks Inc, Foundry Networks Inc, Hitachi Cable Ltd, Intel Corp, Ixia, Nortel Networks, OFS, PMC-Sierra, and Spirent Communications.
The network has 10 hops and includes four of the seven port types specified in the IEEE 802.3ae (10GbE) draft specification, which is expected to be ratified on 13 June during the IEEE Standards Board meetings in Piscataway, NJ, USA: 10GBASE-LR, 10GBASE-ER, 10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LW.
The interoperability demonstration "fulfills the 10GEA's charter of providing resources to establish and demonstrate multi-vendor interoperability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet products," said Caroline Larson, chair of the 10GEA Marketing Committee and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Product Marketing at Intel Corp.
Also, chip-to-chip communication over the IEEE 802.3ae XAUI interface - including a fifth port type, 10GBASE-LX4 ? was demonstrated by 12 companies: Agilent, Blaze Network Products, Infineon Technologies, Intel, Ixia, JDS Uniphase, Marvell Semiconductor, Mindspeed, Molex, Optillion, PMC-Sierra, and Velio Communications.
"10 Gigabit Ethernet technology is ready to be deployed in multi-vendor high-speed LAN, MAN and WAN networks," said Richard Brand, president and director of the 10GEA and director of Content Network Architecture at Nortel Networks.