FEBRUARY 3, 2009 -- Ixia (search for IXIA) today announced that it has delivered its first 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100-GbE) Development Accelerator System (DAS). Ixia is developing 40- and 100-GbE test systems as pre-standard tools to provide network equipment and communications chip manufacturers the capabilities that they need for layer-2/3 traffic generation and analysis.
Ixia says its DAS is the world's first-to-market 100-GbE test system. The company's 40- and 100-GbE test systems include a unique implementation of the 100-GbE physical coding sublayer (PCS) with the underlying multilane distribution (MLD) architecture, which is compliant with the draft 1.1 standard published in December 2008 by the IEEE 802.3ba task force.
Carriers and data center operators will soon need to deploy 40- and 100-GbE networks in order to meet the exponentially growing bandwidth demand. Network equipment and component manufacturers who are building higher speed Ethernet (40- and 100-GbE) FPGAs or ASICs must ensure that they are compliant with 100- GbE PCS standards. With Ixia's 100-GbE DAS, these manufacturers are able to test to the working IEEE 802.3ba standard for higher speed Ethernet, which is expected to be fully ratified in 2010.
Nortel (search for Nortel) is the first customer to use the 100-GbE DAS to test its Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 100-GbE capabilities and to test the next stage of its 100G Adaptive Optical Engine development, transmitting 100-GbE data over a single 100G wavelength.
"In Nortel's research and development labs, we work with the latest equipment in order to help us keep ahead of the technology curve," explains Dino DiPerna, vice president of R&D for Nortel's Metro Ethernet Networks Division. "We chose Ixia's 100-GbE DAS because it is a market leading implementation. Ixia's standards-based test platform provides Nortel with an important tool to accelerate development of emerging 100-GbE service functionality and performance," he contends.
"40 and 100 GbE are the next step for Ethernet speeds in the data center and across the Internet," adds Errol Ginsberg, chairman of the board and chief innovation officer. "Early on, we realized that it was important to get ahead of the technology--to provide a reference implementation that will allow network equipment manufacturers to test their components and systems. The 100-GbE DAS is invoking a great deal of interest from Ixia's customer base," he reports.
Ixia says it is continuing development of its IEEE 802.3ba-compliant 40- and 100-GbE test products, which will offer full layer 2-7 testing for both speeds in 2009. Ixia's 100-GbE Development Accelerator System is the first technology innovation developed by Ixia Labs, headed by Ginsberg.
Ixia will demonstrate the 100-GbE DAS in booth #736 at DesignCon 2009, held in Santa Clara, CA, February 3-4.