At the CommsDay Melbourne Congress 2012, networking solutions provider Brocade and broadband services and device testing specialist Spirent showcased a live demonstration of Australia's first bi-directional 100G Ethernet traffic with full functionality and full speed capabilities, in conjunction with OpenFlow-enabled Software Defined Networking (SDN). For the demo, Brocade interfaced its advanced router, the MLXe, with the Spirent TestCenter platform, providing a line rate connection of 100G Ethernet, in effect creating a 200Gbps bi-directional traffic flow.
As part of its support for OpenFlow, inherent to its SDN strategy, Brocade says its MLX Series routers deliver OpenFlow in hybrid mode, "enabling customization, scale and efficiency breakthroughs for demanding network environments." Additionally, Spirent recently added its support to the OpenFlow initiative with the introduction of the Spirent TestCenter OpenFlow testing solution.
Via the live connection, Brocade demonstrated that its MLX Series advanced router was capable of 100G Ethernet data plane connections, while interfacing to the Spirent TestCenter via a 10G Ethernet port for the control-plane connections. Both connections provided full functionality and full speed, whilst also manipulating the flow of 100G Ethernet traffic, leveraging the traffic generation and OpenFlow Controller aspects of the Spirent TestCenter.
The companies attest that their combined 100G initiative supports and highlights the industry trend towards SDN and its relevance in large scale, high performance networks.
