2013—The Year for 100G Take-Off

The turning point for high-speed optical networks has come, with the growing trend toward 100G deployment now a pressing reality. This need for speed has been fueled by customers’ growing demand for bandwidth, which has in turn forced telecom networks to stretch beyond the confines of 10G and 40G.

With 100G deployments in full swing all over the world, the need for powerful, effective and comprehensive 100G testing solutions remains one of the main challenges. That’s because 100G networks are complex. Not only are CFP pluggable optics immature, they are also expensive and in short supply. To complicate matters, most high-speed network testing equipment offers limited portability, and lacks the right combination of features (multiservice/multirate) on a single platform.

Of course, part of this challenge stems from the fact that no one network uses a single technology. And although 100G is positioned for full-scale deployment this year, according to Infonetics Research, over half of carrier revenue will continue to come from 10G until at least 2016. The market for converged networks will therefore remain steady, and as such, carriers will need to support legacy and next-generation technologies on the same network while ensuring conformity with service-level agreements (SLAs).

EXFO has already responded to these challenges with its new multiservice module that covers the 10M to 100G, but there is much more to come. Stay tuned for more exciting news about EXFO’s latest 100G solutions, which are filtering out the noise and bringing clarity to coherent testing.

If you'd like to keep on reading about this topic, OSP Magazine also published one of my articles, which you can read in the June edition.