The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) have deployed Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform to support its new 400G network. Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipset features 16QAM modulation, which doubles system traffic capacity with 200 Gbps per wavelength and allows for a dual subcarrier 400G solution. Inaddition, Ciena’s Flexible Grid technologies allow ESnet to utilize incremental increases in capacity with the ability to pack more wavelengths on a fiber.
ESnet connects tens of thousands of DOE Office of Science researchers at more than 40 U.S. laboratories and supercomputing facilities to research partners around the world. The network currently carries approximately 34 petabytes of data each month. Traffic on the network has increased an average of 10 times every four years, propelled by the rising tide of data produced by supercomputers, global collaborations that involve thousands of researchers, and specialized facilities like the Large Hadron Collider and digital sky surveys. It is expected that ESnet will need to carry more than 60 petabytes of data per month by 2016.
Ciena said the 400G network will provide NERSC with uninterrupted connectivity during its transition to a new site located on the main campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. It will also support advanced research projects on topics ranging from cosmology to genomics to materials, in addition to generating massive datasets from scientific modeling and simulation.
ESnet has also established a 400G testbed, utilizing fiber from Level 3 Communications, to assess the use of flexible grid technologies, which are being developed to allow service providers to extract additional capacity out of fiber spectrum. The testbed allows ESnet to provide advanced network architecture insights to share with other universities, national laboratories and service providers building next generation networks.
