Infinera Corp of Sunnyvale, CA, USA, a vertically integrated manufacturer of digital optical network systems incorporating its own indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs), has been selected by DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe), an operator of advanced networks for research and education, for the pan-European GÉANT network that it has built and operates on behalf of Europe's national research and education networks (NRENs).
Following a competitive bidding process, DANTE selected the new DTN-X platform to deliver the scalability, simplicity and efficiency demanded by researchers conducting some of the world's most advanced scientific experiments.
With the DTN-X platform, GÉANT's optical network will support multi-terabit transmission using the industry's first commercially available 500Gb/s long-haul optical super-channels, directly connecting 17 major European cities in 16 countries across 12,000km of fiber. Together with Europe's NRENs, GÉANT connects 40 million researchers and millions of students in over 8000 institutions across 40 countries. Some of the world's largest scientific institutions rely on GÉANT's network, including CERN for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) research, and the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (EVN) for radio astronomy research.
The optical layer of GÉANT's network transports massive amounts of data to support experiments and applications that are crucial to academic research, says Infinera. The LHC is one of the world's largest scientific experiments, generating about 25 petabytes of data per year. Many of these experiments require large amounts of bandwidth very quickly. Infinera says that a key factor in DANTE's selection of the DTN-X was hence Bandwidth Virtualization, which leverages integrated OTN switching and GMPLS to rapidly deploy large amounts of optical bandwidth.
The DTN-X platform will deliver long-reach 500Gb/s FlexCoherent super-channels across routes on GÉANT's network such as the 1240km Frankfurt-to-Copenhagen route, scaling the capacity of the network while lowering operational costs. The DTN-X is upgradeable to 1Tb/s long-reach super-channels and MPLS switching in the future, providing scalability with investment protection. Also, because of Infinera's 500Gb/s PICs, the DTN-X consumes less power and space, making the platform more efficient than alternatives on the market and lowering the overall total cost of ownership, the firm claims.
"Research and education networks such as GÉANT help accelerate the pace of important research and are leading indicators of how next-generation networks will be built," says Infinera's CEO Tom Fallon. "DANTE's selection of the DTN-X demonstrates the Infinera solution for multi-terabit optical networks is proving valuable to markets above and beyond traditional network operators," he adds.
