Anritsu Corporation has announced that the Network Master Pro 1040A now supports testing of the 400GBASE-ZR standard optical module to facilitate low-cost data center interconnection (DCI). In addition, it has developed optional BERT for Ethernet 4 x 100G N port and BERT M1040A for Ethernet 2 x 200G N port software solutions for breakthrough communication quality testing to reduce DCI testing workload.
These upgrades support testing of the transition to 400GBASE-ZR circuits and the introduction of linear interfaces, which will help reduce data center construction and expansion costs.
Due to the popularization of 5G services, remote working, online teaching and advances in digital transformation (DX), data centers are proliferating to meet social needs. Limitations on available space, power supply capacity, and air conditioning can cause problems in expanding the capacity of established midsize data centers, so increasing the number of distributed midsize data centers may be more effective than building new hyperscale data centers. This is driving the need for DCI in more midsize data centers.
More recently, open and fragmented market trends in WDM systems have driven the demand for 400GBase-ZR transceivers, helping to reduce circuit costs. Wavelength Division multiplexing (WDM) circuits provided by network operators are widely used in DCI but are expensive.
This space-saving problem is solved by using a segmented interface. On the other hand, each data center is becoming more efficient at the same time. Although high-speed data center Interconnection (DCI) separates data centers, many low-speed distributed port connections take up a lot of data center space.
For example, the 400GBase-XDR4 standard uses only one 400G port on the same panel, compared to four 100G ports previously required, which saves four times as much space as running four 100G cables. In addition, since the number of laser elements is reduced from four required for each communication wavelength used by four 100G links to one laser used by 400G links, less power is used. However, the introduction of these linear interfaces in the data center requires transceiver and device acceptance testing.
With these upgraded capabilities, the device is an ideal measurement solution to assess the quality of communications when this new DCI technology is introduced in data centers.
