Cisco Expands 400G and 600G Trials with CENIC

The Cisco NCS 1004 has been in numerous trials since December of 2018, demonstrating multi-haul transmission. The NCS 1004 offers the flexibility to optimize for higher wavelength capacity or for fiber efficiency to support a wide range of customer applications.

To date the NCS 1004 has successfully completed trials with:

300Gbps over 10,000 km

400Gbps over 4,800 km

500Gbps over 400 km

600Gbps over 80 km

These trials are spread across service provider, content provider, enterprise and nonprofits, proving the value the NCS 1004 and its ability to close the bridge between reach and capacity.

Cisco’s latest trial is with long-time collaborator CENIC, a nonprofit that was established in 1997 to provide high-performance, high-bandwidth networking to California research and education institutions. CENIC’s California Research and Education Network (CalREN) serves the vast majority of K-20 students, educators, researchers and individuals at other vital public-serving institutions. Today, CalREN operates over 8,000 miles of fiber optic cable and serves more than 20 million users.

Notably, scientific research done by CENIC members such as California State University, University of California, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology and University of Southern California includes astronomy, genomics, climatology, seismology and other domains. These researchers have tremendous requirements when it comes to collecting, transferring, processing and storing huge data sets across far-flung locations in California, the nation and the world.

CENIC tested both 400G and 600G on a live production network by upgrading their network infrastructure to flex spectrum ROADMs and the NCS 1004. The 400G and 600G waves were provisioned on a span between Los Angeles and Tustin in California. Testing ran error free. These wavelengths were the first colorless and software-provisioned optical services, and will now enable the support of future network operational benefits to deliver 100G services over the CENIC optical backbone.

“This is an important milestone for CENIC. We have increasing demands for 100G services among our community, from research scientists working with big data sets to educators leveraging technology to transform the classroom. Network capacity should not limit the work or ambitions of our researchers, teachers and students,” said John Dundas III, vice president and chief technology officer at CENIC.

“Given the increasing traffic demands, we are preparing our backbone for 400G and 600G with Cisco to stay ahead of the growing demands from our members,” added Sana Bellamine, CENIC senior optical engineer. “This achievement sets CENIC apart, and I’m proud to be part of the engineering team at CENIC that made it happen.”

The true value the NCS 1004 provides lies in its multi-haul transport capabilities to adapt to any reach use case while providing the highest spectral efficiency. Cisco is moving quickly to support customers like CENIC to maximize their network by enabling more bandwidth and flexibility that multi-haul brings.

Learn more about CENIC and the Cisco NCS 1004.