Spirent Communications worked with optical transceiver maker InnoLight Technology to validate 800G optical transceiver interoperability on a test link that emulated hyperscale data center traffic, the companies announced Monday.
The companies described the project in a press release as successfully demonstrating an 800G link-up and line rate traffic transmission using the IEEE 802.3ck OSFP for VSR application and InnoLight’s 800Gb/s OSFP DR8+ 2km SMP optical transceivers. They added that it is necessary for the industry to become more efficient at validating and deploying 800G as applications like IoT, AI, machine learning and digital reality, as well as evolving 5G applications, are rapidly increasing demand for more network capacity.
The industry is not all that far into the deployment of 400G networks--InnoLight in fact was part of a team that helped AT&T deploy 400G between Dallas and Atlanta in late 2019--but some companies already are preparing for 800G to move toward center stage. Ciena recently said it is seeing customers demand 800G at such a pace that 600G, once seen as the next natural step up in the optical evolution after 400G, is getting pushed to the sidelines.
Even last year, Ciena and Infinera already were working on pushing the transmission distance for 800G in their own tests with carriers. More recently, Huawei recently worked with China Mobile and other partners to verify 800G in an 1,100 km transmission. This announcement
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Spirent said it has witnessed market urgency for 800G as well. “We are seeing increasing demand from customers for 800G test solutions, and this partnership with InnoLight is a major step forward in proving interoperability and increasing customer confidence in this new technology,” said Abhitesh Kastuar, general manager, Cloud & IP, Spirent Communications, in a statement. “We are working at the bleeding edge of current high-speed Ethernet technology development to enable our customers to design, develop and eventually deploy 800G technology, and this successful interoperability demonstration will give early adopters the confidence to accelerate design and development of their 800G capable next-gen devices.”