The companies collaborated with the US Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) for the trial, which shows how SDN can be used to increase and reroute data centre-to-data centre traffic, according to demand.
“This pioneering demonstration showcases the value of an intelligent transport network combined with SDN control,” said Dave Welch, president at Infinera.
“Our converged DTN-X platform is optimal for realising many SDN benefits, including multi-layer optimisation, which increases the efficiency of network resources used at higher layers of the network.”
The demonstration was split into two phases, with the first leveraging ESnet’s on-demand secure circuits and advance reservation system (OSCARS) to provision 100G services across a multi-layer network.
Phase two focussed on multi-layer network optimisation, to examine how proactive detection of increased packet flow bandwidth could allow OSCARS to bypass packet switches or routers.
Inder Monga, chief technologist at ESnet, added: “We believe the ability for the network to quickly and nimbly handle large data flows at the most cost-effective layer of the network is one of the key value drivers for SDN. Being able to provision and optimise the network across both the router and transport layers from a single console using our OSCARS platform and open standards-based protocols is very attractive to ESnet.”
In October, Infinera deployed its DTN-X platform in Russia for one of the country’s largest operators, Rostelecom.
