Windstream Wholesale is claiming a terabit wave distance record. The company completed a live trial that sent a 1 terabit wave across its Intelligent Converged Optical Network (ICON) between Dallas and Tulsa, a distance of 541 km. The trial also looped the circuit and established an 800-gigabit link over a live network of 1,082 km.
The test used coherent pluggable technology.
Windstream Wholesale used Acacia’s Coherent Interconnect Module 8 (CIM 8), driven by the Jannu digital signal processor (DSP). The service provider said that Acacia’s modules reduce power consumption by more than 65% and are more than 70% smaller than comparable equipment. Acacia is part of Cisco.
The ICON is an open and disaggregated network infrastructure that enables wholesalers and enterprise customers to select unique customer routes while gaining insights from the provider’s network intelligence.
“With this trial, Windstream Wholesale and Acacia have broken through the Terabit limit, once again demonstrating the power and benefit of an open, disaggregated network,” Windstream CTO Art Nichols said in a press release. “Our success here further validates Windstream Wholesale’s early adoption of the latest evolution advancements of coherent pluggables, and our strong partnership with Acacia enables us to understand and meet the rapidly evolving bandwidth needs of our customers.”
Last April, Windstream Wholesale said that it had successfully tested the interoperability of QSFP-DD form factor ZR+ pluggable modules from II-VI Inc. (NASDAQ: II-VI) and Acacia. The tests resulted in 400 gigabit links in a production environment over a 1,027 km link. The tests included Marvell’s Deneb Coherent DSP within a native 0 dBm II-VI pluggable, The Acacia module used the Greylock DSP.
The previous month, Windstream Wholesale said it had completed 1000 km 400G field trials leveraging pluggable modules from II-VI Inc. with QSFP-DD-DCO optics that achieve a high transmit power of 0dBm.
