Product category: Optical Transceivers, Transponders and Repeaters
News Release from: Infinera
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 1 May 2006

Infinera joins Ethernet Alliance

Infinera is the first vendor completely focused on optical systems to join the Ethernet Alliance

Infinera has joined the Ethernet Alliance to further the development and acceptance of Ethernet transport technologies for carriers and service providers. Ethernet is playing a growing role in carrier networks, driven by high-bandwidth enterprise applications such as data warehousing and the growing importance of video traffic on the Internet.

Gigabit Ethernet is an economically compelling transport for today's networks and 10 gigabit Ethernet is becoming increasingly significant.

With the current double- and triple-digit annual growth in traffic, 100 Gigabit Ethernet will soon become an economic solution for large networks.

'Many of the interconnections between adjacent routers in the networks of leading carriers already surpass 80Gbit/s today'.

'Ethernet and IP link aggregation technologies are being utilised, with several individual 10 Gbit/s links bonded together'.

'As these links grow into the hundreds of gigabits per second, the scalability of these technologies rapidly breaks down'.

'The industry needs to move to the next generation of Ethernet transport, which means 100Gbit/s and beyond', said Infinera cofounder and CTO Drew Perkins.

The Infinera DTN is the first optical system offering capacity in 100Gbit/s increments, leveraging Infinera's 100Gbit/s photonic integrated circuits (PICs).

Customers with growing volumes of traffic on their networks find the scalable capacity of the Infinera DTN very useful for dealing with fast-growing and unpredictable traffic flows.

Infinera demonstrated 400Gbit/s PICs in 2005 and recently demonstrated the world's first 1.6Tbit/s PIC.

PIC technology promises to be a key enabler for scaling Ethernet into the terabit per second era.

The steady advances of Infinera's PIC technology, combined with the rapid growth of bandwidth in the IP network, suggest that the move from 40 to 100Gbit/s will take a fraction of the time of the move from 10 to 40Gbit/s.

Infinera is the first vendor completely focused on optical systems to join the Ethernet Alliance.

'We're glad to welcome Infinera to the Ethernet Alliance', said Brad Booth, Ethernet Alliance President and Quake Technologies' Director of Advanced Products.

'As the industry looks towards the next speed generation of Ethernet for data centre and carrier applications, optical systems vendors like Infinera will play a key role'.

'With traffic demands spiking beyond the capabilities of 10Gbit/s, 100 GbE platforms are an important challenge', said Jason Marcheck, Principal Analyst - Optical Infrastructure at Current Analysis.

'Infinera has the potential to be a valuable contributor to the Ethernet Alliance as the group looks to push the envelope on 100 GbE development'.

'Infinera's PIC technology can play a key role in driving costs down to the point where the economics of carrier class100 GbE platforms make sense'.

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