Optical breakthrough

In two papers presented to the

(ECOC) in Scotland today,

Bell Labs announced the first reported transmissions of 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) Ethernet over optical. Bell Labs says these results are a significant milestone in the industry's march towards migrating to 100Gb/s data networking.

"This work is a major first. We have broken through the ceiling in transmission rates and described two techniques that could help implement 100G Ethernet over optical systems," said Martin Zirngibl, director, Bell Labs. "With more and more enterprises moving to 10Gb/s transmission, carriers are looking to implement 100Gb/s Ethernet in the Metro Area Network (MAN) as a way to efficiently multiplex and transmit high amounts of data in its native Ethernet format."

Today, Ethernet signals are transported over 10Gb/s and, occasionally, over 40Gb/s SONET connections. This Bell Labs work is aimed at producing 100Gb/s Ethernet-over-optical transmission.

The Bell Labs research team was able to deliver a 107 Gb/s optical data stream, representing 100 Gb/s of data transmission plus a standard 7 percent overhead for error correction, using duobinary signalling and single-chip optical equalisers.