Ciena completes next gen 100Gb/s network trial

Network specialist, Ciena and Renater, the French national telecommunications network for technology and research based the trial on the former's ActivFlex 6500 Packet Optical Platform. The 100G solution supplemented the capabilities of Renater's existing fibre optic network and, according to Ciena, 'considerably' expanded the capacity. During the trial, Renater transmitted data belonging to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), a large scale global collaboration of grid infrastructures and computer centres dedicated to the advancement of the Large Hadron Collider project. Over a petabyte of data was transmitted during the trial at an average speed of 96Gb/s. Eric Sele, Ciena's vice president and regional managing director, South and Central Europe, Middle East and Africa, said: "Researchers and educators work best in collaboration and need high capacity and flexible networks to support their projects. Ciena's 100G technology can catalyse innovation in this sector by connecting the best minds – and their data –faster than ever before. The Ciena team is thrilled that our own technology breakthroughs, including the world's first 100G coherent optics, can help advance the world changing discoveries of the scientific community." According to Ciena, the 100G coherent technology is capable of delivering a total throughput of 8.8 Terabits per second on a single strand of optical fibre. It is based on Ciena's ActivFlex 6500 platform and Adaptive Optical Engine technology, which enabled upgrades from existing 10 or 40G networks to allow research organisations to gradually scale networks as bandwidth requirements grow. Dany Vandromme, director of Renater, said the trial validates the 100G solution's capability to enable high transmission rates. "The ease and simplicity of deploying this type of technology empowers research bodies and opens the doors to new models and theories – especially in the field of high energy physics, where experiments involve large volumes of data," he noted. A second phase of tests was also performed over the Lyon-Dijon link (280KM) with a 100G signal sent as an 'alien wavelength' over existing compensated line infrastructure.