Spirent Introduces World’s First 50Gb Ethernet Test System

Spirent successfully completes the industry’s first 50GbE interoperability test with a global leader in cloud services and infrastructure

Spirent Communications, the leading provider of verification, assessment, analytics and device intelligence solutions, unveiled the world’s first 50Gb/s higher speed Ethernet test solution, that will enable its customers to meet the growing needs of the cloud service provider (CSP) space. Spirent has successfully completed the industry’s first 50GbE interoperability test with a global leader in cloud services and infrastructure.

The 50GbE Boost test system used in the interoperability test, provided full wire-rate packet generation and analysis at 50Gb/s. The 50GbE Boost tests layer 1 to layer 3 quality and highlights error-free performance with different combinations of streams, frame lengths and rates by delivering per-port and per-stream statistics such as latency, frames out of sequence, frame counts and rates, L1 PRBS capability and layer 1 statistics to help debug physical link problems. By demonstrating this ability during the interoperability test, Spirent continues to build on its leadership in high speed Ethernet, showcased in its upcoming QUINT-speed MX3, FX3, DX3 module series for 100/50/40/25/10GbE.

“According to Dell’Oro Group 2015 data, 50Gbps servers will represent more than 30 percent of server shipments in 2019, up from essentially zero percent today,” says Abhitesh Kastuar, General Manager of Spirent’s Cloud and IP business. “With virtualized applications driving server performance it makes sense that access speeds are increasing from 10 to 25 and further to 50Gbps. I believe the rapid adoption of 25G and 50G server links will drive the move to 100GbE and beyond for the uplinks from the leaf nodes to the spine nodes.”

The 25G/50G Ethernet Consortium specification for Gigabit Ethernet (50GbE) benefits cloud and enterprise data center environments with high bandwidth server workloads or very low latency requirements. The 25G/50G Ethernet Consortium was formed to enable 25GE and 50GE solutions and promote standardization efforts. The 50GbE specification cost-effectively increases network bandwidth to allow for cloud service providers to increase the performance and breadth of their services.

Because of the work of the 25G/50G consortium, and accelerated by the industry’s work on 100GbE, the basic building blocks for 50 GbE are now in place. With its new 50G Boost program, Spirent is providing a path forward for industry leaders to get their initial 50 Gigabit Ethernet products to market.