Comcast is all set to green flag 100GBps network the optical networking equipment carrying live Internet traffic over a production fiber infrastructure. The 100-Gbps trial connects Comcast facilities in Philadelphia and to McLean, Va., running over the operator's metro and long-haul fiber links. Comcast is using preproduction versions of Nortel Networks' 100-Gbps interface cards, running in the vendor's Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 system. The sole aim of its executive vice president is to enable a building block for going to wideband. "Wideband" is the shorthand way Comcast and others in the industry have been referring to DOCSIS 3.0, the last-mile cable modem technology that can bond multiple channels together to provide download speeds of 100 megabits per second or more. Comcast is conducting the 100-Gbps optical test in conjunction with the 71st meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the primary technical standards-setting body for the Internet, this week in Philadelphia. Comcast's trial follows a test of the technology by key rival Verizon Communications, which has said it hopes to deploy 100-Gbps optical gear to sometime early this year. In November, Verizon said it completed the first field test of 100-Gbps optical transmission on a live 312-mile network route between Tampa, Fla., and Miami. The telco's test used a live video feed from the FiOS TV network, and optical equipment from Alcatel-Lucent.

Comcast's test is different, according to Schanz, for several reasons: It's running live traffic, and the 100-Gbps wavelengths in the Comcast trial are running over the same physical fiber as its existing 40-Gbps wavelengths, which are handled by Cisco Systems gear. Well I really wish they speed up the consumer wideband infrastructure, cuz that won't need me to back up a movie on my 1TB HDD. The days of streaming file storage, and online data archives will become a reality.

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