Infinera and DANTE were able to install and activate eight Terabits per second (Tbps) of long haul super-channel optical capacity. The record was set using an Infinera Intelligent Transport Network, featuring the DTN-X packet optical transport networking platform, deployed on the GÉANT backbone across a long distance link from Vancis Amsterdam, The Netherlands to GlobalConnect Hamburg, Germany. The DTN-X platform features 500 Gbps super-channel line cards which require only two fiber connectors each. Sixteen such cards and 32 fiber connections were deployed at each end of the link, and once the super-channels were in operation a 100 Gigabit Ethernet service was provisioned over the link. The total time from the insertion of the first super-channel line card to the activation of the 100 GbE service was 19 minutes and 1 second resulting in a provisioning rate of 26.02 Tbps per hour.
“Working with Infinera to achieve the Guinness World Record for fastest provisioning of long-haul transmission capacity on a live network is consistent with our day-to-day experience operating an Intelligent Transport Network,” said Michael Enrico, CTO of DANTE. “Infinera provides the easy-to-deploy multi-Terabit capacity we need to rapidly scale GÉANT, Europe’s largest research and education network.”