The trial was carried out in San Diego, California, AARNet said in a statement, adding that it was a first for Australia and showed the potential for future scalability of the network.

Tests were carried out using Cisco NCS 1004 and NCS 2000 FlexSpectrum Single Module ROADM platforms in the AARNet production network under real world conditions without interrupting customer traffic.

The flexibility of Cisco NCS 1004 was used to adjust modulation format and baud rate to obtain the maximum data throughput over different distances. The configurations successfully tested were:

• 600G single wavelength in a metro data centre to data centre environment (approximately 15km);
• 500G single wavelength over regional distances greater than 300km (roughly equivalent to the distance from Sydney to Newcastle, Wollongong or Goulburn); and
• 400G single wavelength over inter-capital distances greater than 750km (roughly equivalent from Sydney to Melbourne).

The Cisco NCS 1004 has two racks per unit and supports up to 4.8Tbps of client and 4.8Tbps of trunk traffic. It uses flexible, software-based baud rate and hybrid modulation to provide optimised terrestrial data centre interconnect, metro, regional and long-haul deployments as well as subsea applications.

“Our network supports cross-institutional global research collaborations, scientific instruments and the transport and storage of some of the world’s largest datasets,” said AARNet chief executive Chris Hancock.

“This trial with Cisco opens up opportunities for AARNet to provide customers with unprecedented levels of scale to support massive data flows for data-intensive projects such as the Square Kilometre Array.”

“Cisco and AARNet have a long-standing partnership in networking co-innovation,” said Bill Gartner, vice-president and general manager, Optical Systems and Optics, Cisco.

“From here we look forward to applying the same technology and best practices from terrestrial configurations to help AARNet expand trials in subsea and beyond."