At OFC/NFOEC 2011, booth #1253, the Ethernet Alliance has mounted a successful live demonstration of a network running 10, 40, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) traffic – an industry first, according to the consortium. The OFC demonstration set-up includes the Ixia XM12 tester and the Spirent TestCenter tester generating 10GbE traffic to the Mellanox top-of-rack switch, which then drives the Cisco CRS-3 routers that aggregates those 10GbE streams into a single 100GbE stream back into the testers.
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“Members of the Ethernet Alliance are able to come together to demonstrate the newest of Ethernet technologies while also openly communicating with each other about the trends and directions for the next generation of Ethernet,” comments Brad Booth, of Applied Micro, who served as the technical coordinator for the OFC demonstration. “The Ethernet Alliance is a great forum for competitors in the industry to come together to achieve those goals.”
Members participating in the Ethernet Alliance's OFC booth include: ADVA Optical Networking, AppliedMicro, Amphenol, Cisco, CommScope, Ixia, Mellanox, NetApp, Opnext, Siemon, Spirent, and Tyco Electronics.
The Ethernet Alliance notes that it has supported the IEEE Std. 802.3ba-2010 from when it was a mere concept through to ratification of the standard. The organization continues to work towards demonstrating interoperability and market education to help prepare the Ethernet industry for adoption of these new technologies. Multiple new initiatives have also formed within the Ethernet Alliance to discuss the future of Ethernet technologies and what will be needed to support them.
The initiatives are supported by subcommittees such as the Higher Speed Ethernet subcommittee led by Dave Schneider of Ixia who is currently focusing on educational materials and interoperability events, the Next Generation Enterprise Cabling subcommittee led by Brad Booth of AppliedMicro and Frank Yang of CommScope who are looking at what kind of infrastructure will be required to build out next generation data centers, and the Higher Speed Modular Interconnect subcommittee led by Greg McSorley from Amphenol who is demonstrating interoperability of high speed optical modules and copper cables.
In addition, the Ethernet Alliance has unveiled the topic for its upcoming June 14th Technology Exploration Forum, “Next Generation 100GbE Interconnect Specifications,” to be held at Techmart in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, visit www.ethernetalliance.org.
