T-Systems, Alcatel-Lucent deploy commercial 100 Gbps link

JUNE 15, 2010 -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom's corporate customer arm, say they have achieved an industry first by connecting high-performance data centers of the Dresden and Bergakademie Freiberg technical universities with a 60-km link using commercial 100G connectivity that leverages both IP and optical technologies.

The data on the 100G link between the two universities are processed in real-time and are being transmitted on a single wavelength, which the two parties assert is an industry first.

Alcatel-Lucent recently unveiled its commercial 100G technology applied to the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (see "Alcatel-Lucent unveils 100G on 1830 Photonic Service Switch").

The 100G communications technology will improve the cooperation between research facilities and will be used to facilitate more advanced cloud service delivery options and pave the way for proliferation of collaborative multimedia applications.

The new broadband link will provide the research data centers an environment in which they can evaluate the properties of bandwidth-intensive applications and services under realistic conditions, the parties say. Researchers of both universities are using the installation to study the resource requirements of clustered virtual servers, Lustre wide-area file systems, network-attached storage, and real-time video conferencing applications under heavy load.

"As far as network performance is concerned, there is no doubt that we are on our way to the gigabit society, which requires gigabit networks," says Hagen Rickmann, who is responsible for Innovations and Portfolio Management at Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems unit. "We must ensure that we can adapt our networks to the constantly increasing demand for bandwidth anytime and in an economical way. Testing the new 100 gigabit technology between Dresden and Freiberg under real conditions is an important milestone on this way."

The Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) of Technical University Dresden and the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg will use the link to test the application scenarios listed above. For distributing data with the Lustre wide-area file system, ZIH will work closely with Indiana University in the framework of their cooperation agreement. Of specific interest within the various tests is the quality of service delivered under high load. The storage infrastructure for these tests is generously provided by DataDirect Networks (DDN).

"With the increasing research focus on engineering in Freiberg, High Performance Computing is a key technology for us. In addition to our own systems we are strengthening our collaboration with ZIH. This testbed allows us to develop and evaluate future concepts of High Performance Computing usage in Saxony", says Dr. Andreas Kluge, director of the computer center at TU Bergakademie Freiberg.

Core elements of the 100G solution deployed between the technical universities of Dresden and Bergakademie Freiberg are the Alcatel-Lucent 1830 Photonic Service Switch featuring 100G next-generation coherent technology and the Alcatel-Lucent 77 50 Service Router with 100G Ethernet interfaces.

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