ECI Telecom plans terabit trial with COMLINK
COMLINK, a Michigan-based cloud, network, and voice services provider, recently announced that it had expanded its network with the NPT and Apollo packet-optical transport platforms from ECI Telecom North America (see “COMLINK taps ECI for packet optical network expansion”). Now the pair says they plan to use this setup to carry out a live 1-Tbps field trial.
The terabit trial will take place between COMLINK's Chicago-based Sermac point of presence (PoP) and its Grand Rapids data center. Although to date, most terabit trials have been carried out in a well-structured lab-based environment, the COMLINK trial will be a real-time live trial on its public networking infrastructure, the vendor says.
The trial builds on work carried out by ECI Telecom as part of the Tera Santa Consortium, which successfully demonstrated 1-Tbps transceiver transmission over a live optical network (see “Tera Santa Consortium tests 1-Tbps optical transmission via OFDM”). The consortium partners demonstrated transport of non-regenerated 1-Tbps coherent superchannel 16-QAM signals over the German research network DFN-Verein.
Finisar Corp. (NASDAQ: FNSR) and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, also members of the Tera Santa consortium, will work with ECI to realize the terabit trial over COMLINK’s network. The trial will demonstrate flexible-grid optical capabilities to include delivery of 200-GHz superchannel signals over Finisar’s Flexgrid wavelength-selective switch (WSS) devices.
The trial is based on Finisar's software-defined terabit optical transceiver, using Technion's OFDM digital processing algorithms, and ECI's systems/network level technology. The terabit signal will be transmitted over ECI's Apollo optical network with the ROADM modules set in gridless mode.
Using its private fiber-optic network and multiple certified data centers, COMLINK provides enterprises and business customers with a full line of data, Internet, and voice services, including a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. The installation of ECI Telecom's NPT and Apollo packet-optical transport systems were part of a COMLINK network expansion plan driven by the demand for business services, including a new data center and a national private medical network designed specifically for the health care Industry.
"This trial demonstrates Comlink’s investment in future-proof, high-bandwidth technologies that allow us to meet our customers' needs for the expansion and growth of their networks," said COMLINK president and COO John Summerset. "High-bandwidth applications like cloud computing, video, and other large data demands on the current network structure will necessitate these speeds in the near future. The Apollo 100G infrastructure left in place after the trial will provide our customers with increased capacity and access to high-speed broadband as their needs continue to grow."
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