Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN) is involved in what could be the first commercial launch of 100-Gbit/s wavelengths, using the technology to help out the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) .

Ciena is announcing the deal today. It's using a newly minted 100-Gbit/s card on its CN 4200 system to connect NYSE locations within the New York and London metro areas (but not between the cities). (See Ciena, NYSE Try 100Gig.)

As an example, a 100-Gbit/s link will be inserted between the New York trading floor and an NYSE data center in New Jersey, quite an upgrade from the 10 Gbit/s the NYSE has there today.

It's all part of the NYSE's Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure (SFTI) project, a data center overhaul meant to speed up transactions in order to keep the NYSE competitive. The overall project won't be completed until 2010, but Ciena's 100-Gbit/s piece could go live this summer, says Tom Mock, Ciena's senior vice president of strategic planning.

The CN 4200 card is a muxponder, sending and receiving a 100-Gbit/s wavelength on the network side but delivering ten 10-Gbit/s lanes on the client side -- that is, on the side that connects to some switch or router. The NYSE will be using a mix of Ethernet, Sonet, and Optical Transport Network (OTN) connections for that client side, Mock says.

Not all the pieces for 100-Gbit/s technology are commercially available yet, so Ciena has put some home-grown work into the NYSE project, including Ciena-designed chips. The company showed off the single-wavelength technology back in December. (See Ciena Pushes 100-Gig.)

As the NYSE implies, the 100-Gbit/s card is available -- but only in "limited deployments," Mock says. "Realistically, the people who would deploy this are the people who have a very high capacity need or a fiber constraint issue."

Vendors and analysts have been saying a handful of customers are ready for 100-Gbit/s networking right now. The Amsterdam Internet Exchange B.V. (AMS-IX) frequently gets used as an example, along with the vague "financial companies" group.

Mock, like most everyone, doesn't expect to see 100-Gbit/s technology to become mainstream until late 2011 or 2012.

That gives Ciena some time to improve on the technology. The obvious kinds of improvements will be coming, including reduced power and more integration of components. Ciena also wants to adopt coherent receivers, which would let it extend the reach to 1,500 kilometers, Mock says.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading