Huawei, Ethernet Alliance Conduct 50GE Interoperability Testing

At the 2018 Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exposition (OFC), Huawei showcased the 50GE capabilities of its router family and solutions in a multi-vendor interoperability demonstration with industry partners at the Ethernet Alliance booth (#2648).

The demonstration highlighted the 50GE port forwarding packets at line rate speed (50 Gbit/s) over transmission distances up to 40 km, meeting the access layer requirements of 5G transport networks. The multi-vendor interoperability achieved in this test suggests that the 50GE industry chain is maturing, and is almost and ready for commercial applications.

5G base stations will require a peak bandwidth of 10 Gbit/s, and the bandwidth of the bearer network's access ring will reach 26 Gbit/s. Currently, 10GE/25GE ports cannot provide sufficient bandwidth, and 100GE ports that can offer such bandwidth are prohibitively expensive.

As a result, neither one is an ideal choice for mass applications at the access layer. 50GE uses PAM4 encoding technology，as such it has a high price-performance. The price advantage of 50GE ports in the 5G bearer field has attracted wide attention throughout the industry chain and the technology is being followed closely. At present, the 50GE upstream and downstream industries are moving rapidly toward maturity. According to a survey conducted by LightCounting, 50GE will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 218% over the next 5 years, which suggests a huge market space.

This test used 50GE ports for end-to-end networking to test the interoperability between Huawei routers and test instruments from different vendors, such as Spirent and Ixia. This test also demonstrated the technical solutions of optical module vendors, such as Accelink, Hisense, Sumitomo, Source and OPLINK. This test covers the service throughput, line-speed forwarding, service latency, and OAM of the 50GE line card. The test results show that the line card can forward packets of varying lengths at the line speed without packet loss for a long time, and that the optical modules of different vendors can communicate with each other and provide transmission distances up to 40 km. This fully meets the metro coverage requirements of telecom networks.

“The next era of Ethernet is underway and accelerating, as new markets and application spaces seek to leverage the various Ethernet standards and solutions, Ethernet Alliance is committed to promoting the development of the Ethernet industry chain” said John D’Ambrosia, chairman of Ethernet Alliance, “We would like to thank Huawei for its participation at the Ethernet Alliance OFC 2018 booth and the multi-vendor interoperability demonstration of 50 GE.”

The OFC is the leading international event in the field of optical communications. The 2018 OFC Conference and Exhibition is held in San Diego from March 13 to 15, and Huawei's exhibit is located in booth 6201.