Ixia Verifies Force10 Networks Action In Transcontinental 10 GE Network

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Nov 2003

The performance of Force 10 Networks' Force 10 E-Series switch/routers deployed in a transcontinental 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) network has been verified as line-rate 10 GE throughput by Ixia, provider of highspeed, network performance and conformance analysis systems.

The network, the world's first transcontinental 10 GE wide area network, consists of a SURFnet OC-192 lambda between Geneva and the StarEight facility in Chicago via Amsterdam and another OC-192 lambda between this same facility in Chicago and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, provided by CANARIE and ORANO.

In the demonstration, the Force 10 switch/routers connected directly to the SONET equipment using two 10 Gbps WAN PHY interfaces.

"The success of this project is a significant milestone in the development of a worldwide high availability, high performance network that will greatly expand the data sharing capabilities of the world's leading research institutions," said Andrew Feldman, vice president of marketing at Force 10 Networks.

"Ixia has used their expertise to verify that a network can deliver true wire speed 10 Gigabit performance over thousands of miles."

In the deployment, the Ixia 400T traffic generator and analyzer was connected to Force 10's switch/routers to validate performance between the Geneva/Chicago link and the Chicago/Ottawa link. Network expertise and third parry validation was also provided by Cortex Networks for the test configuration and execution.

"Force10's switch/routers were designed for high performance networks, so the throughput validation also required equipment sensitive and robust enough to accurately report on such a wide-scale deployment," said Alan Amrod, vice president of marketing for Ixia.

The transatlantic tests were preceded by pioneering work on the Geneva-Amsterdam segment of the connection, where SURFnet, University of Amsterdam and CERN were successful in running traffic at line rate on the Force 10 WAN PHY connected directly to DWDM equipment in addition to tests run over SONET. Prior to this, CERN, Carleton University, Cortex Networks and CANARIE had performed WAN PHY line rate testing over OC-192 SONET transport equipment in the CANARIE labs in Ottawa.