Following Verizon's announcement of deployment of 100 Gbps technology on a part of its network in Europe, the company announced this week a successful optical fiber transmission of real traffic in a field trial of 100 Gb in collaboration with Juniper and two other firms.

Data was transmitted over a 1,520 km section of Verizon's network in Dallas. The test applied standards-based optics end-to-end and used the latest 100 Gb native router interfaces. In a statement, Verizon said the multi-vendor demonstration validated the standard's maturity.

"With IP traffic on the Verizon network growing year over year, 100 Gb is critical to continuing to satisfy customers' demands, which drive the capacity requirements of our core network," Mark Wegleitner, SVP of technology at Verizon, said. "Verizon has already deployed 100 Gb on a segment of our European network and trials such as this allow us to refine relevant technologies and push 100 Gb closer to widespread deployment."

In addition to Verizon and Juniper, NEC and Finisar participated in the trial. The test used a 100 Gb interface on Juniper's T1600 core router to NEC's SpectralWave DWDM system, fitted with 100 Gb real-time coherent transponders. The router and the system were connected through an IEEE-compliant 100GBASE-LR4 client interface, with Finisar's 100 Gb CFP optical transceiver modules.

"This exciting achievement demonstrates the feasibility of delivering real traffic over 100G Ethernet and successful interoperability between the IP and optical layers," Milorad Cvijetic, VP and chief technology strategist at NEC, said.

Verizon deployed its first 100 Gb long-haul optical system in its European network in December 2009. Prior to that, in 2007, the company conducted a field trial of 100 Gb optical network transmission on a live system and in 2008, the company announced a new record for 100 Gb optical-transmission distance and validated 100 Gb signal quality in comparison with 10 Gb quality.