Lab and live Ethernet testing at scale – 800G and beyond

VIAVI has spent decades testing Ethernet as a service, fueling its leadership position in testing modules, cables, and Ethernet ICs at the PHY layer. We also have products that cover the full stack to L7, offering breadth and depth of coverage.A few years ago, we determined current products on the market for high-scale Ethernet testing at L1 and higher had serious shortcomings for the needs of 400Gb and above.  Drawing on our experience from the deepest (darkest) PHY through PCS and FEC up to L7, we set out to develop a product that addresses the challenges at 800G and 1.6Tb.Testing at Scale from the Ground UpOne thing we quickly noted is that you can no longer just ‘decouple’ the physical layer. Since the advent of PAM-4 modulation and FEC, the insight and management of the PHY layer (CMIS 5.xx) is critical to testing, validation and debugging.Our ONT product line has long led the market for module test and validation with unique applications such as advanced error analysis and dynamic skew, which are critical for debugging at 800G and above. The challenge we faced was scaling this to higher layers and larger port counts while ensuring precision management and comprehensive insight into every aspect of the PHY layer.Designed for Challenges of Speed and ScaleWe designed our award-winning ONE LabPro™ platform to integrate the key architectural needs required at 800Gb and above. It blends insightful physical layer testing capabilities with multi-port, multi-flow, upper layer Ethernet testing – facilitating data plane and control plane testing, high-scale traffic generation, and precision delay testing with a Python-based advanced automation framework.   The VIAVI ONE LabPro received a Lightwave Innovation Award at the OFC24 conference in San DiegoSome notable features of the ONE LabPro platform include:Physical layer visibility and management – a test port for 800G and above must offer deep PHY layer insight, concise and integrated module management, and it must meet the power and cooling expectations for both client and pluggable coherent optics. Our leadership in the 800G ZR development wave has taught us a great deal in support cooling above 30W per module.Insight into the real PCS and FEC performance – Fingerprinting an error lets you know the nature and real margin of the error at a glance.Nanosecond precision at scale – modern applications, especially in the AI/ML space, mandate nanosecond latency precision. A test system needs careful design and architecture to allow nanosecond precision on a per packet basis across hundreds of ports.Dense and highly scalable configuration with independent module management – up to 128 x 800Gb test ports can be stacked or distributed and centrally-managed by a single controller with versatile, easy-to-use, web-based software tools. The system can synchronize mixed combinations of test ports from 100Gb/s to 1600Gb/s. With the highest levels of control and scalability in the market, the VIAVI ONE LabPro platform blends insightful physical layer testing capabilities with multi-port, multi-flow Layer 2-3 Ethernet testingThe Journey to 1.6T is Picking up Speed1.6Tb is very different, even compared with 800Gb. It is not merely about overcoming the challenges of the 224G electrical PHY, it also involves the testing and validation of the innovative FECi concept. This concept is an integral part of our latest ONE LabPro architecture. We will address specific 1.6T testing considerations in future blogs.We invite you to explore our VIAVI ONE LabPro products. You will discover a modern architecture that has been optimized for both 800G and 1.6Tb. Importantly, these products are designed from the ground up, and not tied to legacy products that were designed for 100G and below NRZ.VIAVI Can Help!To get an insightful view of your high-speed optical module performance using testing solutions that meet the highest industry standards, speak to our VIAVI applications team.In addition to the links provided in the blog, please consider our other recent content:  Bamboozled by Bit Errors?,  When Just Good Enough Isn’t Good Enough,  800GB From Chips to Systems.