100G/40G Ethernet—A Rapidly Emerging Market
The ongoing growth of enterprise, residential and mobile multimedia services (such as peer-to-peer, IPTV and video-over-Internet) is producing unprecedented levels of traffic, stressing the bandwidth capabilities of metro and core transport networks. Consequently, carriers worldwide are actively seeking strategies to efficiently and cost-effectively scale IP packet transmission. Specifically intended to facilitate this transition, 100G/40G Ethernet technologies offer carriers the flexibility to phase in the implementation of these higher-speed rates to better align capacity increases with their specific growth and budget strategies.
These new data rates are based on the IEEE 802.3ba standard. The most significant concept introduced in this new working standard is the use of parallel optics, which strongly influence the physical coding sublayer(PCS) implementation—one of the new building blocks for 100G/40G Ethernet. The key difference between the IEEE 802.3ba standard and its predecessor is the introduction of PCS lanes (formerly known as virtual lanes). PCS lanes provide an effective method of handling various parallel optical configurations and, therefore, demand a comprehensive solution that can easily test 4 x 25 Gbit/s, 4 x10 Gbits and 10 x 10 Gbit/s configurations. Thorough PCS testing is among the critical layer 1/2/3/4 tests needed to ensure that 100G/40G Ethernet equipment and network services can be deployed rapidly and with confidence.
The Industry's Most Portable 100G/40G Ethernet and OTN Tester
Leveraging over a decade of FPGA experience, EXFO has integrated Ethernet (IEEE 802.3ba) and OTN (ITU-T G.709) functionalities into the same module, the FTB-85100G Packet Blazer. With this upgrade, you will be able to efficiently and costeffectively share the equipment in the lab: perform field trials and carry out early deployments. Purpose-built for applications where thorough testing, portability, true ruggedness and ease of use are required, this module offers powerful layer 1/2/3 Ethernet traffic generation and analysis, as well as RFC 2544 with Smart Loopback testing capabilities to stress and validate network elements and services against demanding corner cases.
The FTB-85100G Packet Blazer also supports OTU4/OTU3 bit-error-rate testing (BERT) and ODUmuxing capabilities for 100G/40G transponders and muxponders qualification in network equipment manufacturer (NEM) labs as well as optical transport network (OTN) turn-up in the field. Its FPGA-based architecture ensures rapid and seamless incorporation of updates as the standard is ratified and refined moving forward, protecting your testing investment without sacrificing timely support of features and functions.
All existing and newly developed testing capabilities are available via an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and through software keys for field upgrades. No additional hardware or shipping to manufacturer is required.
Optical Transport Network (OTN) Testing
OTN (ITU-T G.709) is the transport technology of choice for 100G/40G Ethernet traffic over the core network due to its operation, administration, maintenance and provisioning (OAM&P) supported capability for troubleshooting and maintenance as well as its forward-error correction (FEC) mechanism for performance enhancement.
The FTB-85100G Packet Blazer supports numerous OTN testing capabilities, enabling breakthrough-level qualification of 100G and 40G transponder and muxponders in NEM labs. These capabilities include OTU4 (112 Gbit/s) and OTU3 (43 Gbit/s) fullline- rate testing with OTN framing and FEC testing as per ITU-T G.709, 100G/40G Ethernet mapping over OTU4/OTU3 as well as single and multistage ODU multiplexing.
EXFO’s FTB-85100G Packet Blazer supports ODU0 and ODU multiplexing into ODU4/ODU3 among many other multiplexing schemes to address the growing demand to turn up Ethernet services and to ensure that new 100G/40G circuits are proven capable of handling any of the demanding services that may be placed on them in the future.
100G/40G Ethernet Mapping over OTU4/OTU3
EXFO’s FTB-85100G Packet Blazer offers 100G/40G Ethernet mapping capability over OTU4/OTU3 through EoOTN software option. This is a key testing capability for NEMs to qualify their 100G/40G transponders development, such as the mapping and demapping capabilities of the transponders as well as the client signal timing transparency. It also provides the 40 GigE specific transcoding capability that must to be qualified to ensure that the 40 GigE frame is properly transcoded from 64B/66B to 1024B/1027B and properly mapped into OTU3 (43G) standard frame.
Moreover, the FTB-85100G’s EoOTN capability is key for service providers who need to commission their OTNs. Thanks to the FTB-85100G Packet Blazer, they can now map 100G/40G EoOTN with different traffic characteristics, run end-to-end BER tests across an OTN and measure the ratio of the error bits compared to the number of sent bits. In this testing configuration, the FTB-85100G Packet Blazer module provides complete analysis of the OTN transport layers, including OTU/ODU/OPU and GMP statistics to ensure proper recovery of the client signal at the receive end. EXFO’s EoOTN testing capability also validates the 100G/40G Ethernet traffic transmission with 100% throughput and ensures that latency does not impact service providers’ service-level agreements (SLAs) with their customers, making Ethernet performance validation essential.
Ethernet Performance Validation
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has put together a test methodology to address the issues of performance verification at the layer 2 and 3 levels. RFC 2544, Benchmarking Methodology for Network-Interconnect Devices, specifies the requirements and procedures to test throughput (performance availability), back-to-back frames (link burstability), frame loss (service integrity) and latency (transmission delay).
The FTB-85100G Packet Blazer can perform the RFC 2544 test suite for 100G and 40G Ethernet interfaces at all frame sizes and at full-line rate, allowing service providers to certify that the circuit is efficient and error-free at 100% utilization. It supports automated RFC 2544 testing, which helps ensure repeatable results. In addition, the RFC 2544 testing capability of the FTB-85100G comes with five Smart Loopback modes. So, whether you are looking to pinpoint loopback traffic from a UDP or TCP layer, or all the way down to a completely promiscuous mode (Transparent Loopback mode), it has the flexibility to adjust to all loopback situations.
The unique Smart Loopback capability of the FTB-85100G gives service providers access to perform end-to-end testing where the remote unit will return traffic to the local unit by swapping packet overhead up to layer 4 of the OSI stack. The Packet Blazer’s full automation also provides ease of use for field technicians by enabling accurate, efficient measurements as well as full testing reports that can be given to customers for future reference related to their specific SLAs.
Signal Conditioning
EXFO’s FTB-85100G Packet Blazer module offers a signal-conditioning tool to characterize the electrical CAUI/XLAUI and physical lanes as well as to troubleshoot electrical-level issues on standard optical interfaces used within 100G/40G systems. This capability provides direct access to amplitude and pre-/post-emphasis control of the 10G electrical CAUI/XLAUI lane transmitters, as well as equalization correction at the receivers. The signal-conditioning interface provides access to the electrical parameters, enabling users to better compensate for signal integrity issues or modify specific electrical parameters to observe the effects of stressing the pluggable optical device. Having the ability to modify signal parameters with a wide dynamic range of amplitude, pre-emphasis and equalization controls, CFP manufacturers can evaluate and optimize the performance of their modules.
Purpose-built for applications where thorough testing, portability, true ruggedness and ease of use are required
