Verizon starts standards-based 100Gb Ethernet rollout

Verizon has set up a standards-based, multi-vendor 100Gb Ethernet link between routers in Paris and Frankfurt, in the company's first such deployment in the world.

The 100Gb Ethernet standard was ratified at the end of May last year. Routers and blades based on 100Gb Ethernet have appeared since then, but Verizon said on Wednesday that the link on the company's European backbone network was the first to show the fruits of the standardisation. The routers came from Juniper Networks and the coherent optical transport system from Ciena.

"We don't have to look too far into the future to know that bandwidth needs will continue to grow, so Verizon is taking this next step of deploying a 100Gb Ethernet link to stay ahead of that demand," said Verizon global network planning chief Ihab Tarazi in a statement. "We will continue to deploy this technology on our global network where demand is highest."

According to Verizon, the new link can carry up to 10 times the amount of network traffic that would be manageable on a standard connection. The technology is suited to very high-bandwidth applications, being used for example in an upgrade to Cern's research network infrastructure.

On Friday, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Juniper also announced a step forward in the use of 100Gb Ethernet equipment: the two companies have successfully tested 100Gb Ethernet interoperability between NSN's hiT 7300 DWDM optical transport network kit and Juniper's T1600 core router.