Comcast Thinks Big
It's old news that Comcast has deployed Cisco's CRS-1. (Actually, it's even older news.) Today, the operator is announcing a live test of 100-Gbit/Ethernet on the router, though. (See Comcast, Cisco Test 100-Gig.)
It's the second test of 100-Gbit/s that we've seen in a couple of weeks, as Avago Technologies Pte. , Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN), Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA), and XO Communications Inc. teamed up for a demo at NXTcomm. (See 100-Gig Demo.)
Perhaps in the interest of equal time, Comcast is also saying it's ordered "additional Juniper Networks MX-series Ethernet Services Routers and T1600 core routers." (See Comcast Deploys Juniper.) I think the "additional" part refers to the MX, which Comcast says it started using a year ago, and not to the T1600. Come to think of it, I wasn't aware Comcast was using the T640.
I'll be talking with all the parties involved, seeing if there's a more complete story I can build up here.
— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading
The test was using StrataLight's transponder chassis. Similar to the Avago / Infinera / Ixia / XO test from last week, it used multilane distribution (MLD) to stripe 10x10Gig wavelengths from the Cisco CRS-1 to the StrataLight box. It sounds like StrataLight then sent a single wavelength, using a modulation scheme they don't want to specify, to send the signal 300km.