Bell Labs Team Demonstrates World's First 10-Gigabit-Per-Second Ethernet Multiplexer

LAS VEGAS - A research team from Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, will demonstrate the world's first 10-gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) Ethernet multiplexer at the Networld+Interop show here this week.

The prototype, called the GigaChannel Ethernet multiplexer, will be demonstrated in Lucent's booth (#4989) during regular show hours, as part of Lucent's Cajun Campus products exhibit.

The multiplexer is the first to transport native (without protocol conversion) Ethernet frames at rates of 10 Gb/s, a significant stepping stone toward the evolving 10 Gb/s Ethernet standard. The Bell Labs team designed and built the GigaChannel multiplexer in only six months.

In March of this year, the IEEE 802.3 standards committee started a 10 Gb/s Ethernet study group for a next-generation LAN standard. "The standards process is expected to take several years to complete," said Edward Szurkowski, director of the Bell Labs Information System Research Lab, "but Lucent is already demonstrating 10-gigabit connections between commercially available products."

The experimental GigaChannel Ethernet multiplexer provides 10 Gb/s connectivity for Gigabit Ethernet switches, routers and servers and is fully compliant with today's IEEE Gigabit Ethernet standard. This will enable network operators to implement 10 Gb/s solutions without a 10 Gb/s Ethernet standard.

"As switches and routers with 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports emerge, Lucent will be at the forefront with all the 10 gigabit technology that is needed to build them¾from fiber and transceivers through packet processors and switching elements," said Menachem Abraham, vice president of Lucent's LAN Systems Group.

The GigaChannel takes up to eight Gigabit Ethernet streams and multiplexes them onto a single fiber link for transport across a campus or metropolitan network. The eight ports can be from a single Gigabit Ethernet switch, such as Lucent's award-winning Cajun P550 Switch, or from multiple switches or servers.

The native Ethernet framing is preserved, as are the payload, virtual LAN (VLAN) tagging, quality of service, and other Layer-2 and Layer-3 services. In addition, standardized link aggregation protocols can be used to trunk gigabit channels carried by the GigaChannel just as though they were separate gigabit links. Future 10-gigabit products will require all of these capabilities.

In the exhibit demo, a two-kilometer fiber links the two GigaChannel multiplexers, providing 10 Gb/s in each direction, but the research team has demonstrated up to a 15-kilometer reach, using low-cost uncooled laser sources like the Lucent D372 FastLight transmitter. The technology is also compatible with DWDM systems, enabling low-cost Ethernet-base connectivity over WDM metropolitan networks.

Also at Networld+Interop, Lucent announced a Bell Labs demonstration of 10 Gb/s serial data transmission over multimode fiber for LANs, using an 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser transmitter. The demonstration represents an innovative, cost-effective blueprint for practical next-generation multimode systems.

A team of Bell Labs scientists transmitted data at 10-Gb/s using an 850nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) transmitter with a prototype multimode fiber developed by Lucent Technologies. Previously, one Gb/s transmission was considered to be the maximum capacity for practical multimode systems.

The team studied various alternatives to achieve 10-Gb/s performance in an in-building LAN, and concluded that the serial 850 nm-based system on multimode fiber offers the lowest total system cost while retaining cost effective backwards compatibility to lower speed legacy applications.

To simulate rigorous real-world conditions, the record-setting demonstration was done with three worst-case optical connections, plus worst-case cabling stress effects and alignment tolerances of low-cost transceiver packaging. The performance level was achieved over a distance of 300 meters with an error rate of less than one in one trillion.

"This demonstration establishes the specifications for a practical 10-Gb/s system because it allows for variables such as connection loss, cabling loss and transmitter-to-fiber misalignments to be added to the system," said Martin Nuss, head of Bell Labs Optical Enterprise Networks Research. "We developed a prototype multimode fiber and new system performance parameters using a 10-Gb/s 850 nm VCSEL prototype transmitter and prototype detectors to make the demonstration successful."

The demonstration supported 10-Gb/s serial transmission up to 300 meters, a distance sufficient for the vast majority of in-building networks according to the IEEE, an industry organization that formed a 10-Gigabit Ethernet study group in March 1999.

"This demonstration showed that a multimode fiber-based system can economically support 10-Gb/s serial transmission," said Luc Adriaenssens, Premise Systems engineering director at Lucent. "We included the effects of real-world conditions in the system to demonstrate the viability of a serial 850 nm-based multimode system for commercial LAN applications. This demonstration indicates that a viable, cost-effective 10-Gb/s solution is feasible for in-building networks."

Lucent Technologies designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronics components. More information about Lucent Technologies is available on the worldwide web at http://www.lucent.com