Interconnect Assemblies Pass 40- And 100-Gb/s Interoperability Testing

A recent plugfest for IEEE standard 802.3ba-2010 40- and 100-Gb/s Ethernet underscored the commercial viability of high-speed Ethernet to the network-infrastructure market. Hosted by Ixia at its iSimCity lab in Santa Clara, CA and assisted by the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab, the Ethernet Alliance's (EA's) Higher Speed Ethernet (HSE) subcommittee interoperability plugfest was designed to verify interoperability of 40- and 100- Gb/s test equipment, systems, NICs, transceivers, and cabling.

The high-speed interconnect products from Siemon, for example, passed both 40- and 100-Gigabit Ethernet testing. Testing included the following: Siemon's Moray Quad-Small-Form-Factor-Pluggable (QSFP) active optical and QSFP passive copper cable assemblies; multi-fiber MTP-connectorized equipped OM3 and OM4 optical assemblies; and singlemode fiber with SC connectors. All Siemon high-speed cable assemblies passed their respective 40- and 100- Gb/s interoperability tests. The cables fully interoperated with both the transceivers and systems at the plugfest.