Spirent First to Show 400G Ethernet Test Solution

Sunnyvale, Calif. – June 18, 2014 — Spirent Communications today announced the first public showing of its 400G Ethernet Test System, with live demonstrations at Light Reading’s Big Telecom Event in Chicago, USA, June 17-18, and at a press conference in Beijing, China on June 18. Spirent, Huawei and Xilinx have been collaborating for more than six months to successfully complete testing of Huawei’s NE5000E core router using the Spirent 400G Ethernet Test System. The tests verified the Layer 1-3 quality and highlighted error free performance with different combinations of streams, frame lengths and rates including a single stream running at full line rate.

Solution Highlights: 400GbE Put to the Test

The IEEE predicts that mobile devices, high-speed data center servers, internet-enabled entertainment, cloud computing and social media will push network link speeds to 1Tb/s by 2015 and 10 Tb/s by 2020. While the development of 400G network devices will help address the expanding demands for network capacity, they present new testing challenges and push the limits of today’s technologies. Testing 400G devices starts with validating the link’s ability to pass up to line rate traffic, as well as and testing the functionality, performance, scalability and quality of experience (QoE) of the upper-layer engines that deliver services.

Spirent has developed a complete testing solution for early design and development of 400G Ethernet systems, with a one-slot blade form factor compatible with Spirent’s existing chassis and its other Ethernet products. Key features of the solution include:

• Sending and receiving Ethernet frames from 64 to 16K bytes in length

• Generating and analyzing 400G traffic as a single stream running at line rate or as an aggregation of multiple streams

• Compensating for small clock differences between link partners with parts per million (PPM) adjustment

• Delivering per-port and per-stream statistics such as latency, frames out of sequence, frame counts and rates, and layer 1 statistics to help debug physical link problems

• Allowing modification of generated frame contents

• Capturing received traffic at wire rate

Executive Quotes

Eric Hutchinson, CEO, Spirent Communications

“The collaboration with Huawei and Xilinx to develop and validate our 400G test solution builds on Spirent’s position as the leader in high-speed Ethernet testing. As a result of this effort, we are ready for a live showcase of a solution that enables network equipment manufacturers and service providers to move forward with early 400G design projects and effectively test their next-gen offerings.”

Peter Stassar, Technical Director, Europe R&D Center, Huawei

"The success of this single port 400GE testing will help with standardization and commercialization of 400GE. Huawei will continue to work with partners—to keep innovating and advancing the industry to a new level.”

Hemant Dhulla, Vice President of Wired Communications at Xilinx

“As the unique foundation technology used in Huawei’s 400GE single-port router and Spirent’s 400G Ethernet test solution, Xilinx is very proud to be part of this milestone achievement and continue our industry leadership and first to market focus. Spirent, Huawei and Xilinx have worked together to overcome bottlenecks related to high bandwidth and high-speed packet processing and sustain line-rate processing for packets of all lengths at 400GE. Xilinx’s 28nm Virtex®-7 H870T is the only industry device capable of allowing 400GE line card deployment. The work our companies have done will benefit the industry as a whole and further the advancements of 400GE standardization.”

To learn more about the industry’s first market-ready 400GbE testing solution from Spirent, visit: www.spirent.com/go/400g