OREANDA-NEWS. Deutsche Telekom and partners prove first world-wide multi-vendor interoperability on a 100 Gigabit Ethernet long haul link on TeraStream pilot network in Croatia. The trial is an important milestone towards the future of generally available 100GbE networking.

Deutsche Telekom AG affirms its leadership in the next generation Internet infrastructure by proving multi-vendor interoperability on a 100Gbit/s long haul DWDM link in its TeraStream pilot network at Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia. The link is implemented using a common standard for the optical line side which was jointly developed between Deutsche Telekom AG, Cisco Systems Inc., Alcatel-Lucent (Alu) and Cortina Systems.

In December 2012, Deutsche Telekom AG together with Hrvatski Telekom (HT), Deutsche Telekom AG’s subsidiary in Croatia, launched its TeraStream pilot network in Croatia. TeraStream is an industry leading network concept, based on a cloud enabled Internet Protocol (IP) architecture. The pilot features 100 Gbit/s links over a filter-less DWDM1 system. Now, for the first time ever, multi-vendor interoperability on 100 Giga bit Ethernet (GbE) long-haul DWDM links has been proven between IP routers from Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent.

The specialized test was completed over the TeraStream pilot backbone infrastructure between the cities of Split and Varazdin - a fiber distance of about 600 km - using 100GbE IP router interface and transponders from Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent.

This demonstrates that is possible to use IP routers from different vendors, exchanging data without any intermediate equipment such as traditional DWDM systems.

Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, Group Chief Technology Officer, Deutsche Telekom AG says: "The need for bandwidth is constantly growing. This milestone is another important step towards the future of generally available 100GbE networking. Leveraging the TeraStream passive network and the jointly developed standard, we can achieve drastic cost savings in the area of optical transport. We envision that this will also be the most cost efficient optical interconnect for datacenter applications. We are pleased with the latest advancements from the vendors.”

"In order for us as a company to achieve success in the future, we need to have networks that can support the most advanced communications and services,” said Ivica Mudrinich, President of the Management Board of Hrvatski Telekom. “I am especially proud of two things: Firstly, that Croatia with Hrvatski Telekom is the first country in the world to install this innovative technology which will become key to our future success, to the development and competitiveness of the economy and will improve the lives of individuals. I am also proud of our Croatian experts who, together with colleagues from Deutsche Telekom, are implementing this highly demanding, innovative network concept."

The tests were a joint effort between Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Hrvatski Telekom and Deutsche Telekom AG as a part of the ongoing work to evolve infrastructure for future electronic communications.

“Global private networks and the Internet are built on a foundation of open standards and interoperability. To that end Alcatel-Lucent is pleased to support the DT TeraStream project with our field-proven IP and optical solutions,” says Basil Alwan, President of IP Routing and Transport, Alcatel-Lucent.

"This demonstrates Cisco's commitment to having an open, standards based network providing for focus on the service. This milestone is one of many we hope to achieve partnering with DT and the industry to move technology forward and push continual innovation," says Bill Gartner, VP/GM High End Routing and Optical, Cisco.

The actual link, the industry’s first of its kind, consists of 600Km of Standard Single Mode Fiber (SMF) leveraging the TeraStream colorless, open spectrum, passive network. The 100 Gb/s signal, carrying live production traffic, leverages ITU standard 50GHz spacing via a high gain forward error correction algorithm capable of achieving 10Gb/s comparable distances. The implementation in this test used pre-standards, aligned in ITU Study Group 15.

1 DWDM stands for Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, an optical technology used to increase bandwidth over existing fiber optic backbones.