NetBlazer 100G Overview

Hi, welcome to the NetBlazer 100G Tech Corner. Today we’re going to take a look at the two newest additions to our NetBlazer family. First, we’ll start with the FTB-890:  EXFO’s smallest, portable 10M to 100G high speed tester, perfect for field testing of multiple speeds and technologies in metro networks. So, let’s get to it: The first interface here is the SFP/SFP+ slot. Here is the SFP. With this interface, we can test Ethernet traffic up to 10 GigE, SONET/SDH, CPRI BBU and RRH emulation from 1.2 to 9.8G, packet synchronization and Fibre Channel all the way up to 16X—a real differentiator for our tester versus others on the market. Second, here’s the CFP4 used for high rates, namely 100G Next we have the QSFP slot supporting both: QSFP+, for 40G links; and QSFP28 pluggable transceivers, used for 100G transmissions. The QSFP28 is very important because anybody testing 100G networks today knows that a huge number of QSFP28 interfaces are being deployed and this trend won’t stop, particularly in data centers. So both native CFP4 and QSFP28 slots on the same unit—again very important to have this capability when testing 100G networks in the metro. At the end we have an SMA interface for “reference out” for 1 pps testing and synchronization and an interface for “clock in” used to get a clock signal from the same unit that you’re testing. When executing a test, you’ll notice right away that it’s very simple for technicians to see exactly which interface is the active one. Right here, this blue light indicates that the XYZ interface is running a test. This is another great feature that EXFO has added—again to make things more intuitive and simpler for the field technician. Now we’ll move to the FTB-890NGE which has the same powerful capabilities as the FTB-890 but we go one step further by adding complete legacy capabilities, dual port 10G and testing of speeds from 64K all the way to 100G. It's great to have a high speed tester, but there are legacy technologies out there that operators need to test for the foreseeable future, so this is the perfect module for that. Let’s take a closer look at the interfaces: The RJ45 for 10Meg to 1 Gig Ethernet testing SFP and SFP+ for multiple types of testing like 10 GigE, SONET/SDH, CPRI BBU and RRH emulation from 1.2 to 9.8 Gig, packet synchronization and Fibre Channel up to 10X Electrical interfaces: RJ48, BANTAM, and BNC connectors to perform several electrical tests on PDH, DSN, SONET/SDH and ISDN PRI What’s very interesting about this module is its ability to run dual port testing , specifically for: EtherSAM (Y.1564) RFC 2544 Traffic generation and monitoring EtherBERT and CPRI as well So, just recap: the FTB-890 provides 10M to 100G testing with CFP4 and QSFP+/QSFP28 interfaces, and the FTB-890NGE adds legacy network testing over and above that, testing speeds from 64K all the way up to 100G. That brings us to the end of the tour of the NetBlazer FTB-890 and FTB-890NGE. If you’re interested to learn more, take a look at our other NetBlazer 100Gig Tech Corner capsules. Thank you.