Networking vendor Ciena has announced plans to deploy 100 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) Ethernet network equipment to connect NYSE Euronext’s New York and London datacenters. The equipment will connect the respective trading floors over a single optical wavelength with the lowest latency possible.
 
Expected to be operational in 2010, the network equipment will make use of an upcoming extension of ITU-T G.709/Y.1331 currently under discussion in Study Group 15, ITU-T’s Study Group on optical transport networks and access network infrastructures.

G.709/Y.1331 defines “Interfaces for the Optical Transport Network (OTN)”. OTN is presently offered at three bit rates, OTU1 (~2.7 Gb/s), OTU2 (~10.7 Gb/s) and OTU3 (~43 Gb/s), where the latter corresponds to the highest bandwidth on a single wavelength commercially deployed today.

OTU4 will define a transport interface capable of carrying the 100 Gigabit Ethernet client signal studied in IEEE’s P802.3ba 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Task Force.

Also see background papers by NORDUnet, Nortel and NTT describing the transition to 100G and the related standardization activities.

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