Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) says it worked with Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) on a pilot deployment in which Comcast carried a 600-Gbps wavelength between two data centers 800 km apart. The two companies then successfully doubled that distance to 1600 km by looping a 600-Gbps wavelength back and forth between the two facilities.
The pilot, conducted with the Comcast Labs and Network Engineering teams, used Ciena Waveserver platforms equipped with Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent transmission engine. The deployment is the first to combine the WL5e with the Waveserver platform, says the company. The link between the two data centers used a mix of fiber. The data centers were in Newark, NJ, and Pittsburgh, PA.
Ciena says that use of the coherent transmission technology will ease the transition to 400G-interface routers and universal 400 Gigabit Ethernet in the Comcast National Backbone network without regeneration.
“As the largest fixed-broadband provider in the U.S., we know the way people consume media and data, in general, is changing and we’re committed to continue and support the increased customer demand with increased capacity across our network,” commented Noam Raffaelli, senior vice president, network and communications engineering, at Comcast. “This recent achievement allows us to benefit from Ciena's continued innovation in its coherent optical technology, optimizing both our network architecture as well as our overall cost per bit.”
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