Bell Labs revs up Ethernet to 107Gbps over 2000km

Bell Labs claimed today to have completed the first demonstration of 10 channels of 107Gbps data over 2000km of fibre.

The research and development arm of Lucent Technologies said that the transmission over such a distance proves the technology's viability for networks where 100Gig Ethernet performance is required.

Bell Labs researchers also announced the successful transmission and reception of electronically multiplexed and de-multiplexed 107Gbps traffic using hardware similar to that used in today's 40Gbps networks.

By employing differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) at 107Gbps, the high-speed electronics and opto-electronics were required to have a mere 25 per cent speed increase compared to those used in today's 40Gbps systems.

A prototype of the integrated Lithium Niobate DQPSK modulator was provided by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan and Sumitomo Osaka Cement.

The use of technology similar to commercially available products is a significant step towards realising the viability of manufacturing and installing 100Gbps-based networks at a reasonable cost per transmitted information bit, according to Bell Labs.

"An enormous amount of research at the Labs is focused on providing carriers with broadband network technologies that enable their metro area networks and backbones to support the dramatic increase in IP traffic by enterprise applications and consumer services such as IP-based video on demand, " said Martin Zirngibl, director of Bell Labs.

"Our breakthroughs in transmission distance and the use of commercially viable components prove that 100Gbps serial is a viable technology for transmitting data traffic in its native Ethernet format."