Ciena said Comcast, largest fixed-broadband provider in the US, is deploying its WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) and grid technology for conducting the world’s first long-distance 600Gbps single wavelength pilot deployment.
600Gbps single wavelength pilot carried live commercial traffic across more than 800km between core peering locations in Newark, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Comcast also looped back the signal and verified successful operation of 600Gbps across 1,600-kilometers in order to test the full capabilities of the technology.

Comcast Labs and Network Engineering teams achieved a two times increase in wavelength capacity across the mixed fiber link while leveraging Ciena’s WL5e technology.

The deployment of WL5e on the link between Newark and Pittsburgh is the first in Ciena’s Waveserver 5 form factor. Waveserver 5 leverages WaveLogic 5 coherent technology to scale up to 12.8Tbps in a compact 2RU footprint, allowing Comcast to maximize fiber capacity and reduce the amount of hardware required to support high-bandwidth service growth.

WL5e facilitates the evolution to 400G-interface routers and universal 400GbE transport across any location in the Comcast National Backbone network without regeneration. This capability will allow Comcast to continue scaling its network at the pace of its business, with less power and lower overall costs.

“This recent achievement allows us to benefit from Ciena’s innovation in its coherent optical technology, optimizing both our network architecture as well as our overall cost per bit,” said

Noam Raffaelli, senior vice president, Network and Communications Engineering, Comcast in a statement.