Facebook, Infinera to Create 8 Tb/s European Optical Network

Facebook Inc. is preparing to deploy an intelligent transport network developed by Infinera Corp. to create a 3998-km optical network route across Europe with a capacity of up to 8 Tb/s.

The network connects Facebook’s data center in Luleå, Sweden, to major hubs throughout Europe. It incorporates Infinera’s DTN-X platform and FlexCoherent modulation scheme.

Today, Facebook delivers to its European network 100-Gb/s coherent transmission via 500-Gb/s superchannels featuring a forward-scale design to support 1.2 Tb/s superchannels in the future. The high-capacity superchannels are enabled by 500-Gb/s photonic integrated circuits (PICs) from Infinera.

PICs enable the DTN-X platform to integrate wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) superchannel transmission with up to 12 Tb/s of non-blocking optical transport network switching, providing seamless scaling in the future as traffic requirements grow.

The DTN-X also features SDN-ready application programming interfaces to enable network programmability and automation of network operations, reducing both operational cost and service delivery times while facilitating new services.

“The Infinera intelligent transport network makes it easy for us to rapidly grow network capacity while keeping operations simple,” said Niclas Comstedt, director of network engineering at Facebook. “Once the equipment is in place we are able to turn up as many terabits as we need.”

TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin said content providers like Facebook are adding long-haul fiber optic network capacity at a rapid pace. Private network capacity in Europe has increased by more than a factor of eight between 2010 and 2014, he said.

“The route we are announcing with Facebook is delivering multi-terabit capacity today, and I believe this is the world’s longest 8-Tb/s-capable route in production,” said Dr. Steve Grubb, fellow at Infinera.

“Facebook is a classic example of how leading Internet content providers are building global networks that interconnect their data centers to accelerate the delivery of high-bandwidth, feature-rich services worldwide,” said CEO Tom Fallon.