Telstra and Ciena have successfully trialled continuous data encryption while maintaining speed and reliability over 21,940km across multiple cable systems. The engineering teams demonstrated the ability to encrypt data securely in transit between Los Angeles and Melbourne at 100Gbps, using Ciena’s ultra-low latency 100G wire-speed encryption solution.
“A series of advanced demonstrations such as these are necessary before any product is released commercially. In partnership with Telstra and Ciena, Ericsson provides end-to-end systems integration expertise to deliver the secure solution, with our teams continuing to hit faster encryption milestones,” said Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand.
“In January 2015, we had success at 200Gbps between Melbourne and Sydney, then with 10Gbps speeds over the greater distance from Melbourne to Los Angeles in January this year. Now we have achieved 100Gbps. Ericsson will continue to support Telstra’s path toward commercialisation of this enhanced security capability.”
With the digitalisation of business processes and data consumption rapidly rising, the need to keep data secure without compromising integrity or significantly increasing latency is essential at both the application and network layers. This trial demonstrates that data can now be successfully encrypted at the network layer and the application layer, a feature that provides extra security provisions
Darrin Webb, executive director of international operations and services at Telstra, said that the demonstration showcased that customer services with large bandwidth requirements can be secured and data transported across virtually any distance and over an underlying network that uses multiple vendors.
“This means we can provide service consistency regardless of the cable system used. Customers will also be able to protect their data not only at the application layer, but also at the network layer without any reduction in quality,” added Webb.
“Enhancing our network leadership in the Asia-Pacific region is a priority for us and this innovation continues our commitment to providing customers with a world-class network experience.”
This trial demonstrates the advanced security that can be delivered while data is ‘in transit’, that is, being transmitted beyond the walls of a data centre across extensive networks, without any impact to performance.
