Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN) is announcing Tuesday that it's completed 100Gbit/s subsea trials with Pacific Crossing Ltd. , a subsidiary of NTT Communications Corp. (NYSE: NTT).

The trials, on a 9,500km span from California to Japan, included old and new Infinera systems. Infinera's DTN ran 100Gbit/s Ethernet transmitted on 40Gbit/s optical channels, the first test of the flagship system's 40Gbit/s modules. Infinera also used its FlexCoherent technology for controlling the modulation scheme via software.

On the DTN-X, which hasn't begun production shipments yet, Infinera transmitted 100Gbit/s optical channels using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation and soft-decision Forward Error Correction (FEC).



Why this matters
The modulation schemes and FlexCoherent are really the elements to pay attention to here. The undersea market will be a big part of the splash Infinera wants to make in 100Gbit/s next year, and that's one market where carriers might want to try different modulation schemes -- trading off distance for performance, for example.

So, while the vendor's 100Gbit/s developments are cool and attention-grabbing, this is also part of Infinera's bid to win more undersea business.

NTT, by the way, was announced as an Infinera customer in 2009.

For more
Follow the recent saga of the DTN-X and Infinera's quest for 100Gbit/s. Why, we remember it all just as if it happened last month!

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading