NEW YORK -- Ethernet Expo Americas 2011 -- Canoga Perkins has a 100Gbit/s network interface device (NID) on the way next year.

It's not clear how much demand there might be for a 100Gbit/s demarcation device yet. But James Heney, Canoga Perkins director of marketing, told an Ethernet Expo panel Wednesday that one carrier is ready to start lab trials on the 9145E100G, as it's so glamorously named, next month. The carrier plans to try it out in a test installation (not on the live network) in mid-2012, Heney said.

It was possibly the most low-key product announcement at the Expo. Later in the panel session, Heavy Reading analyst Stan Hubbard joked about how nonchalant Heney was about getting to 100Gbit/s; Heney just shrugged.

You can't yet get your hands on a 9145E100G, as Canoga Perkins is still finishing work on a printed circuit board. In fact, Canoga Perkins got the field programmable gate array (FPGA) it needed just last month. "We were working with a couple of FPGA companies during this development cycle," keeping to the cutting edge of the chips' technology, Heney says.

A 100Gbit/s device would certainly help Canoga Perkins stand out in what's generally considered a commodity market. Companies such as Accedian , ADVA Optical Networking and Omnitron Systems Technology Inc. don't seem to have said anything about 100Gbit/s NIDs yet.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading