DANTE selects Infinera DTN-X platform for GEANT Research and Education Network

Research and education network operator DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe) has selected the DTXN-X platform from Infinera Corp. (NASDAQ: INFN) for the pan-European GÉANT network that it operates on behalf of Europe’s national research and education networks (NRENs).

GÉANT directly connects 17 major European cities in 16 countries across 12,000 km of fiber. Together with Europe's NRENs, the network provides connectivity for 40 million researchers and millions of students in over 8,000 institutions across 40 countries. Some of the world’s largest scientific institutions rely on GÉANT’s network, including CERN for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) research, and the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (EVN) for radio astronomy research.

Following a rigorous competitive bidding process, DANTE selected the new Infinera DTN-X platform to deliver the scalability, simplicity, and efficiency demanded by researchers conducting some of the world’s most advanced scientific experiments. Infinera’s DTN-X platform will enable GÉANT’s to support multi-terabit transmission

The optical layer of GÉANT’s network transports massive amounts of data to support experiments and applications that are crucial to academic research. The LHC is one of the largest scientific experiments in the world, generating about 25 petabytes of data per year. Many of these experiments require large amounts of bandwidth very quickly, and a key factor in DANTE’s selection of the DTN-X was “Bandwidth Virtualization” which leverages integrated OTN switching and a GMPLS control plane to deploy large amounts of optical bandwidth rapidly.

Infinera’s DTN-X platform will also deliver long-reach 500-Gbps FlexCoherent superchannels across routes on GÉANT’s network, such as the 1,240 km Frankfurt to Copenhagen route, scaling the capacity of the network while lowering operational costs. The DTN-X is upgradeable to 1-Tbps long-reach superchannels and MPLS switching in the future, providing scalability with investment protection.

“We are impressed by Infinera’s PIC technology and the DTN-X platform,” said Michael Enrico, CTO at DANTE. “From significantly simplifying our operations and reducing the time to deploy bandwidth to fundamentally lowering our total cost of ownership –these were all factors that we considered against more conventional competitors.”

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