3 August 2011

10X10 MSA releases 10km and 40km 100Gbps standards

The 10x10 MSA (multi-source agreement), an ecosystem of organizations creating 100Gbps solutions, has announced the public availability of 10km and 40km specifications to expand into new applications.

Founded in December 2010, the 10X10 MSA is an industry group of 25 companies dedicated to technology and standards development for low-cost 100Gbps client interfaces based on 10G signaling. It has established an open framework for the industry including all stakeholders of the ecosystem. Members include Google, Brocade, Santur, JDSU, Huawei, Facebook, BTI Systems, AMS-IX, MRV, EXFO, Enablence, CyOptics, AFOP, Oplink, Hitachi Cable America, Kotura, Effdon, Source Photonics, Verdant Networks, Kaiam, Innolight, Fourte Design, Viscore, Maxim and Cortina Systems.

The MSA says that, having garnered strong support and growing commitments through multiple deployments around the world, it was compelled to develop a new common specification for longer-reach applications to help mitigate development risk and eliminate the need for custom or proprietary solutions, while also reducing both development and manufacturing cost.

The 10km reach specification builds on existing 2km specifications to ensure backward compatibility and interoperability with the existing 10X10-2km standard. This helps service providers to extend data-center networks to campus networks and beyond. The 40km specification leverages existing 10Gbps DWDM network specifications to enable seamless upgrade of existing 10Gbps metro links to 100Gbps over up to 40km single-mode fiber without the need for regeneration or amplification.

“We are very pleased with the widespread adoption of 10X10 optical modules,” says 10X10 MSA chair Scott Kipp, senior technologist at Brocade. “The new 10X10-40km standard enables up to 800Gbps of data to transmit over a single fiber — that’s the speed the industry needs,” he adds.

“Optical modules based on the 10X10 standards have become the most popular single-mode 100Gbps optics,” says Milind Gokhale, chief technology officer of Santur. “We have now reached another milestone which demonstrates that the 10X10 MSA specifications can easily scale to enable low-cost, power-efficient 100Gbps networks scalable from data-center networks to metro networks,” he adds. “Having a large ecosystem of component suppliers and network equipment suppliers has enabled service providers to deliver a smart and easy way to expand their networks and deliver the benefits of 100Gbps networking.”

“The addition of 10x10-40km to the 10x10 MSA provides a cost-effective solution scalable to 100GbE aggregation and metro applications, and the specified band-WDM option provides a low-cost solution for combining multiple 100GbE traffic in a single fiber,” says Rang-Chen Yu, VP of business development at Oplink.

“CyOptics is pleased to work with the 10x10G MSA members to develop low-cost 100 Gigabit Ethernet specifications that now address 100Gbps networking applications up to 40km reach,” says Stefan Rochus, CyOptics’ VP of marketing & business development. “The 10x10G-40km reach implementation of 10 wavelength channels on a 100GHz DWDM grid allows cost-effective future upgrades to 4x100G or even 8x100G over a single fiber to meet the increasing bandwidth demand in metro networks,” he adds. “CyOptics will make the DWDM TOSA and ROSA components commercially available leveraging our in-house laser, detector and silica PLC [photonic lightwave circuit] device technologies, and our automated hybrid integration and packaging platforms.”

Other users and developers who are interested in joining the 10X10 MSA can contact MSA members at info@10x10msa.org.

See related items:

Santur ramps-up production of 10X10 MSA-compliant 100Gbps CFP modules

Tags: 100Gbps

Visit: www.10X10msa.org