April 28, 2005 Fremont, CA -- The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), a non-profit, global industry organization dedicated to advancing the standards and methods of optical networks, has completed two implementation agreements (IAs) relating to common electrical I/O technology.

The first IA, CEI 11G-LR, addresses 11 to 13-Gbit/sec applications over backplanes. According to the forum, this IA responds to the industry's move toward higher speed electrical signaling, driven by system vendors' desire to quadruple the bandwidth of existing systems without increasing the number of backplane traces. The second IA, CEI Protocol (CEI-P) is a protocol designed for use with fast electrical interfaces developed by the CEI project team. According to the forum, a key feature of the protocol is its Forward Error Correction (FEC) capability, which is tolerant of burst errors, and substantially improves the error rate performance of a link. The forum says FEC capability can improve a channel's bit error ratio by as much as 12 orders of magnitude.

According to the forum, the two agreements build upon the existing CEI IA, published last quarter, which addressed 6-Gbit/sec short and long reach, and 11-Gbit/sec short reach applications. The forum says that, taken together, these IAs complete a two-year effort to increase system capacity and bandwidth by doubling and quadrupling the rate of electrical signaling between chips and over backplanes. At February's DesignCon 2005, eight OIF member companies successfully demonstrated interoperability of CEI electrical signaling running at 5 and 10 Gbit/sec over backplanes.

In related news, the OIF held a member workshop before its second quarterly meeting this month, in order to discuss Ethernet services. Topics addressed by industry experts included business trends and drivers, standards work, and network management. The half-day workshop also included a service providers' panel, offering perspectives from different global geographic regions. According to the forum, its Ethernet services focus ties in with its ongoing UNI/NNI work, and its 2005 World Interoperability Demonstration, to be shown publicly at Chicago's Supercomm 2005 , in July.