Comcast and Ciena completed a live field trial of a 1 Terabit/sec optical transmission spanning nearly 1,000 km over Comcast’s existing long-haul fiber infrastructure connecting Ashburn, Va. to Charlotte, N.C.
The 1 Tbps trial, which took place during the first week of October, carried live data traffic over a 1 Tbps 16QAM super-channel. At the same time, that network was also carrying customer traffic over 10G, 40G and 100G wavelengths, all coexisting on a mix of flexible and 50GHz-spaced fixed grid channels.
The trial used Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform solution that combined flexible grid Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADM) with 16QAM coherent modulation to achieve 5b/s/Hz of spectral efficiency over a distance of nearly 1,000 km of uncompensated ELEAF fiber.
Ciena’s next generation Raman and programmable gain amplifiers, the newest addition to the WaveLogic intelligent coherent portfolio, provided optimized performance and system reach. The trial ran in parallel over the same optical infrastructure that supports a combination of HD video, Internet and voice traffic on Comcast’s existing 100G national backbone.
“We continue to work with Ciena to leverage our already installed Ciena 6500 platforms to deliver more content, faster Internet speeds and enable new cloud-based applications for our customers,” said Steve Surdam executive director, Network Engineering at Comcast Cable. “As we look to continuously evolve our network infrastructure, Ciena’s high-capacity Terabit optical technology will give us the flexibility and scalability required to future proof our network to deliver next-generation products and services for our customers.”
- Comcast has been leveraging Ciena’s coherent 40G and 100G technologies across its national fiber network since 2009. Ciena’s packet networking solutions also support Comcast’s Metro Ethernet services offering.
