Seven firms from the optical space have formed a trade association to accelerate the adoption of passive optical network (PON) technology in local area networks (LANs). The founder members of the Association for Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN) are Corning, IBM, SAIC, TE Connectivity, Tellabs, Zhone and 3M. These companies have an involvement with enterprise cabling […]
The Market Focus Theatre at next month’s ECOC Exhibition will see a record number of speakers presenting, with executives from major operators like BT and Verizon heading up the schedule. The ECOC Exhibition will be held on September 23 to 25 at the ICC London ExCeL. Sponsored by Oclaro, the Market Focus Forum will include […]
Intel and Corning have given further details about a 1.6-Tbps connector and cable they are developing for data centre connectivity. The collaboration combines Intel’s silicon photonics technology delivering 25 Gbps-per-fibre data rates with Corning’s ClearCurve LX multimode optical fibre and MXC connector. The fibre has a reach of 300m using a 1310nm wavelength which, combined […]
Semtech has announced a low-power physical layer (PHY) silicon design that supports data rates up to 28 Gbps. Known as the SBMULTC2T28HPM28G PHY, the silicon intellectual property (IP) is designed for chip-to-chip and chip-to-optical module designs. The PHY can be used in a single-lane configuration or as a multi-lane macro for the different implementations […]
The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has achieved its first milestone in defined the carrier requirements for software-defined networking (SDN). The goal of the OIF’s work is to make SDN “carrier grade”. The OIF’s Carrier Working Group has now moved on to the next stage, its Framework Document. “The Framework Document should define the gaps we […]
u²t Photonics has announced a balanced detector that operates at 70GHz. Such a bandwidth supports 64Gbaud symbol rates, twice that of current 100G coherent optical transmission systems. The German company announced a coherent photodetector capable of 64Gbaud in 2012 but that had an operating bandwidth of 40GHz. The latest product uses two 70GHz photodetectors and […]
Cisco continues to enhance its core router product line with the announcement of the Carrier Routing System-X (CRS-X). Available later this year, the CRS-X is a 400Gbps per interface slot system that can be expanded to nearly 1 petabit per second in a multi-chassis deployment. That’s 10 times the capacity of the original CRS-1 platform, […]
TeliaSonera International Carrier (TSIC) is extending the use of Infinera’s DTN-X to its European network, having already adopting the platform in the US. Infinera has also outlined the next evolution in its networking strategy, dubbed the Intelligent Transport Network. TSIC is adopting the DTN-X 100G services in Europe to accommodate its own growing […]
It’s a little over one year since Ciena unveiled its 400G coherent optical technology. Now it appears that 800G superchannels – tightly linked groups of wavelengths that can be managed as a single wavelength – are nearly ready for prime time. Working with BT, Ciena has carried out a series of pioneering trials […]
DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe), the organisation that operates the pan-European GÉANT research and education network, says it installed and activated 2 Tbps of capacity and provisioned a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) service in less than 12 minutes combined. The pan-European network operator used production DTN-X platforms from Infinera, which […]
News and BusinessThis year sales of 100G optical network technology are expected to top $1 billion for the first time – they already hit this number on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), according to the latest market report from Ovum. The general outlook for the optical networking equipment market is less […]
Alcatel-Lucent has created a business venture that plans to use software defined networking (SDN) to address data centre networking bottlenecks. The internal start-up, Nuage Networks, is tackling network connectivity within and between data centres. Networking in the data centre connects computing and storage resources. Servers and storage have largely undergone virtualisation such that […]
Optical transceiver developer Effdon Networks has demonstrated a 100Gbps CFP module with an 80km reach, which it claims is an industry first. The start-up has also developed the Qbox, a one-rack unit (1RU) extended-reach platform capable of 400–800Gbps and an 80–200km reach. The CFP is based on the 10×10 MSA. “We have managed […]
Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. says it has developed a prototype optical transceiver with embedded optical time-domain reflectometer (eOTDR) functionality. This could significantly reduce the cost of troubleshooting in fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, the company claims. An OTDR detects backscattered light in optical fibres and uses this information to compute the location of faults. Traditionally, […]
Silicon photonics is gathering speed, judging by the increasing number of foundry services that enable optical developers to share wafers and prototyping costs. The latest is available via US semiconductor foundry MOSIS, which has partnered with ePIXfab, the European support centre that coordinates low-cost multi-project wafer services for silicon photonic integrated circuits (ICs).
Kaiam Corp. has secured $16 million (€12.3 million) in C-round funding and has completed the acquisition of Gemfire. With the acquisition, Kaiam gains planar lightwave circuit (PLC) technology and Gemfire’s 8-inch wafer fab in Scotland. The start-up has developed hybrid integration technology that achieves sub-micron alignment yet only requires standard electronic assembly tools. […]
Vitesse Semiconductor has detailed its latest Carrier Ethernet access switch for mobile backhaul, cloud and enterprise services. The Serval-2 chip boosts Vitesse’s existing access switch offerings by adding 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and near-tripling the switching capacity to 32Gbps; the Serval-2 has 2x10GbE and 12x1GbE ports. The device features Vitesse’s service aware architecture […]
Luxtera and Kotura have both demonstrated 100 Gbps QSFP optical modules based on silicon photonics technology. The Luxtera QSFP is a four-channel integrated transceiver that uses a single laser and is tailored for 500m although Luxtera says it can achieve 2km. The Kotura QSFP, in contrast, uses two chips, has a reach of […]
Optical switch specialist Calient Technologies and data centre switch developer Plexxi have joined forces to bring the benefits of a software-defined optical layer – namely increased flexibility and efficiency with decreased complexity – into the data centre environment. The integrated products were displayed at OFC/NFOEC in March. Aimed at large-scale data centres, this integration employs the major […]