Native 10 Gigabit Ethernet experiments over long distances

Abstract

The current solutions for transmitting data over Wide Area Networks (WANs) are expensive and require protocol translation at layer 1. The IEEE recently standardized the 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) WAN PHY as a native gateway from the Local Area Networks (LAN) to the WAN. This opened a debate as to whether Ethernet is now a valid alternative to Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) for WANs. In this article, we report on the experience gathered while building the first trans-European native 10 Gigabit Ethernet testbed based on WAN PHY. We describe and analyze network tests with a 1700 km Ethernet network. Our work validates this approach and indicates that Ethernet can offer a large bandwidth to long-distance bulk data transfers at a trans-European level.