Higher Speed Ethernet (HSE)
Ixia - THOUGHT and ACTION Leader in High Speed Ethernet
The next generation of Ethernet, commonly called High Speed Ethernet (HSE), is on the near horizon for manufacturers of network equipment, servers, NICs, data communications chip devices, optical transceivers, fiber optic, and copper cabling. The IEEE P802.3 Task Force is rapidly converging on a new standard for HSE that defines the operation of standard Ethernet frames running at 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s. The standard is scheduled to be release in June of 2010.
Major suppliers of computer networking, switching, routing, and aggregation systems are now developing 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40 GE) and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GE) products for their service provider and carrier customers. All of these areas, from the component to the system manufacturers, and their end-users require testing 40 GE and 100 GE transmission and data communications equipment. The test requirements for HSE span from the simplest of layer-2 data plane traffic generation and analysis all the way to the most sophisticated, upper layer, stateful network communications testing, including IPTV, VoIP, video on demand, HDTV, Internet gaming, and multimedia streaming services. These are driven by social network web-based services, and many more high growth, bandwidth hungry applications.
Ixia has been an active participant in the IEEE P802.3 standardization effort starting in 2006 with the IEEE Higher Speed Study Group, which validated the needs for the next generation of Ethernet. In 2007 when the Higher Speed Study Group officially became the IEEE's P802.3ba Task Force, Ixia facilitated in developing the new standards. During 2007 and 2008, while working in the Task Force Ixia played a key role in prototyping the proposed methods for the new 40 GE and 100 GE Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS). Ixia presented the results of the various proposals and recommended the Task Force to adopt the multilane distribution (MLD) mechanism. MLD is a key 100 GE technology enabler that allows the use of using today's component technology to build 40 GE and 100GE systems. Later in 2008 the IEEE Task Force adopted MLD as the baseline for the new 40GE and 100 GE PCS. Ixia is an active contributor to the IEEE standard and has three 802.3 voting members.
In June of 2008 Ixia demonstrated the world's first 100GE traffic generation and analysis system in a live network at NXTComm08. With the 100 GE Proof-of-Concept demonstration, Ixia proved the viability of the 100 GE standard by showing how the new 100 GE PCS works over 10-lanes of 10Gb/s second traffic in a live network test. The demonstration included full 100 GE line rate traffic and measured frame counts, rates and detected errors. This demonstration provided a high degree of assurance for early adopters of the new HSE technology that data communications test capability is practical and available when it is needed within critical development time frames.
In September of 2008, Ixia has made available for sale the worlds' first 100 GE Development Accelerator System test product. The 100 GE Development Accelerator System is designed for early adopter 100GE product development teams to reduce development and test cycles.
In September of 2008, Ixia also demonstrated 40 GE testing in a proof of concept demonstration at Broadband World Forum '08 in Brussels. The demonstration showed Ixia's commitment to cover all aspects of high speed Ethernet testing.
For more information contact your Ixia Sales Representative.