Nokia has successfully completed end-to-end testing of Ultra Ethernet Transport (UET) traffic across its AI-ready data center switching platforms in collaboration with Keysight Technologies. The test spanned 800GE links across Nokia’s 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) and 7250 IXR series, validating performance, scalability, and compatibility with the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) Specification 1.0. The switches were running Nokia’s SR Linux NOS, with simultaneous verification of RoCEv2 and Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification (DCQCN) features.
The test underscores the rising importance of lossless, ultra-low-latency networking in hyperscale AI and HPC environments. Traditional Ethernet lacks the determinism and performance guarantees required by real-time AI workloads, where packet loss or jitter can derail training jobs. UET introduces a new transport layer built atop Ethernet to address these demands, aiming to transform Ethernet into a scalable, interoperable, and AI-optimized fabric protocol.
Nokia’s early support for UET positions it among the first vendors with a commercially available, UEC-compliant switch fabric. The collaboration with Keysight used its AresONE 800GE platform to emulate large-scale AI workloads, further demonstrating the coexistence of UET and RoCEv2 within a unified data center fabric.
• Nokia tested Ultra Ethernet Transport over 800GE links across its 7220 IXR-H5 and 7250 IXR-10e switch families
• Keysight’s AresONE 800GE-8P-QDD-M system generated UET traffic flows across the Nokia network
• Testbed confirmed coexistence of RoCEv2 and UET with Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification (DCQCN)
• Nokia switches ran SR Linux, part of its modernized data center fabric solution
• Nokia affirms support for UEC Specification 1.0 and ongoing participation in UEC working groups
“AI is changing the game when it comes to expected performance in AI data center networks. This successful demonstration with Keysight of UET traffic over Nokia’s 7220 IXR and 7250 IXR product families demonstrates our commitment to the UEC and provides clear evidence that Nokia is a leader in this evolution,” said Rudy Hoebeke, Vice President, Software Product Management at Nokia.
🌐 Analysis: Ultra Ethernet is gaining momentum as the next-generation fabric for scale-out AI infrastructure. By testing UET in live 800GE environments, Nokia joins Broadcom, Arista, and AMD-Pensando in accelerating its readiness for 100K+ GPU clusters. UET’s emphasis on tight latency control and congestion management makes it a viable alternative to legacy RoCEv2 and InfiniBand. Nokia’s ability to support both UET and RoCEv2 offers flexibility to cloud and AI infrastructure operators transitioning to next-gen fabrics.
🌐 We’re launching the “Data Center Networking for AI” series on NextGenInfra.io and inviting companies building real solutions—silicon, optics, fabrics, switches, software, orchestration—to share their views on video and in our expert report. To get involved, send a note to jcarroll@convergedigest.com or info@nextgeninfra.io.
