BT Lights Up World’s First 800Gbps Fibre Super Channel

Laboratory tests have reached 800Gbps before, but this is the first time it’s gone long distance, covering the 410km between BT’s Adastral Park research centre, near Ipswich in Suffolk, and the BT Tower in London, using equipment from network kit vendor Ciena. The surprising thing is that the test was successful on fibre which was previously not considered good enough to carry 10Gbps.

via BT Lights Up World’s First 800Gbps Fibre Super Channel.

HP Calls Out Cisco With Data-Center Switches

The star of HP’s show, or at least the product with the biggest number, is the FlexFabric 12900 core switch, which can fit 768 10Gbit/s ports or 256 40Gbit/s ports. Cisco’s 18-slot Nexus 7018 claims to have the same 10Gbit/s density but only has cards to support 96 40Gbit/s ports.

via Light Reading – HP Calls Out Cisco With Data-Center Switches.

Closing the gap to improve the capacity of existing fiber optic networks

The research team, which included Professor Arthur Lowery and Dr Liang Du of the Monash Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering and Jochen Schroeder, Joel Carpenter and Ben Eggleton from the University of Sydney, managed to transmit a signal of 10 terabits per second (Tb/s) more than 850 km (528 miles) using the new technology.

via Closing the gap to improve the capacity of existing fiber optic networks.

Photonics Fire Up Radical Core Router Startup

Compass-EOS claims it can eliminate that step and just keep throwing routers at the problem, so to speak. Each router treats neighboring Compass-EOS routers as if they were its own line cards.

There’s a distance limitation, of course: about 200 meters. That’s still long enough that two routers, working in conjunction, can be on different floors of a building.

via Light Reading – Photonics Fire Up Radical Core Router Startup.

Ciena Still Struggling for Profitability

That trend, naturally, shows up in its full-year numbers. For fiscal 2012, Ciena generated revenues of $1.83 billion, up about 5 percent year-on-year, and a net loss of $144 million. Its full-year non-GAAP loss was 23.5 million, or 24 cents per share, slightly worse than Wall Street had expected.

via Ciena Still Struggling for Profitability – Optical Networking – Telecom News Analysis – Light Reading.

Ciena’s not alone, of course, in feeling the effects of a shrinking optical market. (See Margin Misery for Alcatel-Lucent.)