Spirent Communications unveiled its 400G Ethernet Test System — an industry first — and announced the completion of testing of Huawei’s NE5000E core router. The tests verified the layer 1-3 quality and highlighted error free performance with different combinations of streams, frame lengths and rates including a single stream running at full line rate.
Spirent’s pre-standard 400G Ethernet Test System uses Xilinx’s 28nm Virtex-7 H870T programmable device. Spirent, Huawei and Xilinx have been collaborating for more than six months on 400GbE testing.
Spirent said its solution marks an important for the industry in the development of 400GbE systems. The 400G Ethernet Test System is a one-slot blade compatible with Spirent’s existing chassis and its other Ethernet products. Key features of the solution include:
- Sending and receiving Ethernet frames from 64 to 16K bytes in length
- Generating and analyzing 400G traffic as a single stream running at line rate or as an aggregation of multiple streams
- Compensating for small clock differences between link partners with parts per million (PPM) adjustment
- Delivering per-port and per-stream statistics such as latency, frames out of sequence, frame counts and rates, and layer 1 statistics to help debug physical link problems
- Allowing modification of generated frame contents
- Capturing received traffic at wire rate
“The collaboration with Huawei and Xilinx to develop and validate our 400G test solution builds on Spirent’s position as the leader in high-speed Ethernet testing. As a result of this effort, we are ready for a live showcase of a solution that enables network equipment manufacturers and service providers to move forward with early 400G design projects and effectively test their next-gen offerings,” stated Eric Hutchinson, CEO, Spirent Communications.