2 March 2015

Infinera 500G super-channels deployed across RETN's pan-European network

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), says that its DTN-X packet optical transport networking platform has been deployed across the pan-European DWDM network of international network service provider RETN Ltd.

Infinera says that its Intelligent Transport Network, featuring the DTN-X platform, enables RETN to differentiate its service offerings and increase network efficiency as it scales network capacity across its extensive pan-European backbone.

RETN operates a backbone that stretches over 30,000km of fiber and connects 26 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. It has selected the DTN-X to power its network core and its crucial points of presence located in Europe. The firm's homogeneous pan-European network infrastructure along with associated Internet Protocol circuits is capable of providing 100Gb/s services on multiple routes in Europe.

With the DTN-X platform, RETN can deliver capacity of 100Gb/s coherent transmission today via 500Gb/s super-channels, with a forward-scale design to support terabit super-channels in the future. The high-capacity super-channels are enabled by 500Gb/s photonic integrated circuits developed and fabricated by Infinera, which is claimed to be the only supplier delivering 500Gb/s of transmission capacity from a single line-card. PICs enable the DTN-X platform to integrate dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) super-channel transmission with up to 12Tb/s of non-blocking optical transport network switching, providing seamless scaling as traffic requirements grow in the future. The DTN-X also features SDN-ready application programming interfaces that enable network programmability and automation of network operations to reduce both operational cost and service delivery times while facilitating new services.

"RETN's global footprint is growing rapidly due to constantly increasing traffic between different territories on the one hand, and RETN's intention to address our customers' geographical interests and to improve their connectivity between the world's largest telecoms nodes," says RETN director Anthony O'Sullivan. "At the moment, the RETN network has a total capacity of 5Tb/s on the four main traffic routes and handles a considerable amount of international Internet traffic. In order to respond to the traffic growth, we need to scale our network, while complying with strict requirements for high-performance WDM equipment," he adds.

"We consider Infinera's solution unique as it enables smooth migration toward coherent super-channel technology," continues O'Sullivan. "In addition, the Infinera equipment provides us with the ability to meet strict service-level agreement requirements and keep the quality of our services at a high level. For these reasons, we use Infinera's solutions to upgrade and extend the RETN network. One of our latest completed projects - the launching of a trans-Baltic DWDM route from Finland to Poland through the Baltic cities - deploys Infinera DTN-X equipment based on 500G super-channel technology," he adds.

"For the past five years, Infinera's solutions have powered the RETN network and now RETN has again selected an Infinera Intelligent Transport Network for its network extension beyond Russia and into Central Europe," notes Chris Champion, Infinera vice president, EMEA sales. 

Tags: Infinera InP

Visit: www.infinera.com

Visit: www.retn.net