Technical Insight
Vendors demonstrate 10 Gbit/s products (Fiber News)
Two optical component suppliers, Cielo Communications and Picolight, have proven the readiness of their 850 nm VCSEL-based transceivers for 10 Gigabit Ethernet short-reach interconnects (see ). Both companies demonstrated 10 Gbit/s serial optical links spanning 450 m, while meeting bit-error-rate requirements of 1 1012, or one error in every trillion bits. The demonstrations were part of an effort by the 10 Gigabit Ethernet 10BASE S group, whose member companies work independently to develop technologies supporting the emerging IEEE P802.3ae standard. If adopted, these 850 nm links should enable much cheaper high-volume network solutions for metro and access applications compared with today s 1310 nm or 1550 nm devices. Picolight s optical modules have also been used in a separate demonstration supporting the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard. The company connected its 850 nm VCSEL transceiver with switches from Foundry and a network performance analysis system from Spirent, over a distance of 300 m. The demonstration supports the viability of extending Ethernet connectivity from the LAN all the way into metro and WAN. "Spirent, Picolight and Foundry have shown that the technologies are maturing rapidly," said Chris Simoneaux, Picolight s director of product marketing. "This gives the industry confidence that cost-effective, low-power links will soon be widely available."
