“Spirent has allowed us to put our latest Open Fabric data center solution, the BlackDiamond X8, to the test and demonstrate its 40 GbE performance and capacity to deliver critical services” said Harpreet Chadha, vice president of product management for Extreme Networks.

The need for 40/100G Ethernet at the core of the network initially, extending to the edge eventually, is driven by many factors, including elimination of aggregation protocols, bandwidth growth at the edge of the network, and the rise of for-pay services like HD IPTV, VoIP, cloud computing, and cloud storage. The 100G Ethernet delivery test requirements are different than previous 1G and 10G Ethernet because of the strong emphasis placed on QoS/CoS, realism, stacked protocols and multiplay services over 100G.

As with any new technology, the key to success is testing. But 40/100G Ethernet brings a new set of issues to the development cycle. First are the challenges at the physical layer. Second is the critical issue of the test platform itself. There’s more to being 40/100G ready than providing a 40G or 100G Ethernet interface on the system.