European optical show spotlights high-speed Ethernet demos

Manufacturers clearly have been busy since the IEEE finalized its standards for 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s connectivity about three months ago. This week’s European Conference on Optical Communications conference in Turin, Italy, is serving as a launching pad for several related announcements.

Opnext (NASDAQ:OPXT) and Anritsu Corporation announced what they called “the successful public demonstration of the industry’s first 100GBASE-LR4 module at an OTU4 transmission rate of 11.8 Gb/s.”

100GBASE-LR4 is the interface defined in the recently ratified IEEE 802.3ba standard that uses four wavelengths over a pair of single-mode fibers to deliver speeds of 100 Gb/s for up to 10 kilometers. The OTU4 transmission rate is defined in the International Telecommunications Union’s Optical Transport Network standard.

Opnext also announced it will work with Ixia (NASDAQ:XXIA), a provider of converged IP network test solutions, to demonstrate “error-free, line-rate transmission of 40 GbE traffic using the new Opnext 40GBASE-LR4 CFP transceiver module” and an Ixia test solution.

The 40GBASE-LR4 interface uses four wavelengths over a pair of single-mode fibers to deliver speeds of 40 Gb/s for up to 10 kilometers. The CFP is an industry consortium whose members include Avago, Finisair, Fujitsu, Opnext and Sumitomo Electric. The Opnext module supports four data rates: 39.8 Gb/s, 41.25G/s, 43 Gb/s and 44.6 Gb/s, the company said.