The test, which the company says “is the first of its kind”, included the verification of 400GE port functions such as line-speed forwarding, multi-service stacking, and fault reporting.
The quantum leap in development and the explosion of services like HD video and cloud computing has caused traffic across the backbone to increase by 45% annually. These annual increases across the network pose critical bandwidth challenges. At present, 100GE is the highest line-rate commercially available.
“The IEEE 400GE standard is expected to be adopted by the end of 2017 and, as various international bodies are accelerating the standardisation process of 400GE, the perfection and establishment of these standards will rely on early and sufficient testing to verify their performance” said Zhu Yongqing, director for IP technology research of the China Telecom Research Institute.
“This collaborative test marks the first R&D evaluation of its kind and perhaps most importantly, the achievement of our expected outcome is a landmark step for the adoption of standardised 400GE medium and long-range technologies.”
The trials were performed in China Telecom's network and terminal key laboratory using test cases based on real-world network applications, while Guangzhou Research Institute was responsible for network requirements, test-case design, and execution. Spirent provided testing equipment for the project, which included Spirent TestCenter with DX3-400GO-P2 400G and FX3-100GO-T2 100G test modules.
Zhou Jiaxin, sales director for Spirent Communications, said: “The joint innovation endeavour of the Guangzhou Research Institute, Huawei and Spirent lays a solid foundation for the industry-wide maturity of 400GE technologies, marking the threshold for the commercialisation of next generation high capacity port technologies provided by 400GE.”
To meet today’s bandwidth challenges, Spirent has adopted a high-density mandate to offer test solutions with more 100GbE ports in one test module than any other vendor. In addition, Spirent expects to continue this standard of high port density in future releases, giving customers a higher return on investment and smaller footprint of rack space.
“Spirent has been involved in the entire 400GE R&D and evaluation process, making great contributions to the research and development of the standard. We track development trends, continue investment in core technologies, and provide innovative solutions to our customers and the industry to advance the evolution of networks and improve services for the cloud age,” added Abhitesh Kastuar, general manager for cloud and IP solutions at Spirent Communications.
It is Spirent’s hope these results will help to advance the commercialisation of 400GE in carrier networks and data centres.
