Facebook's European terrestrial network has its data center in Luleå, Sweden, and extends to major hubs across Europe. To connect these hubs, Facebook used Infinera's product portfolio, including the DTN-X platform, and leveraged the company's proprietary FlexCoherent™ solution to deliver multi-terabit capacity over a single fiber across the continent.
Today, Facebook offers its European network consistent 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) throughput across 500 Gb/s superchannels and is designed to grow with the potential to support 1.2 Tb/s superchannels in the future. These high-capacity superchannels are enabled by 500 Gb/s photonic integrated circuits (PICs) developed and manufactured by Infinera, the only vendor offering 500 Gb/s throughput from a single network card. The PICs allow the DTN-X platform to integrate wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) superchannel throughput with up to 12 Tb/s of non-blocking optical transport network switching, providing easy scalability as traffic demands increase over time. The DTN-X also features SDN-ready application programming interfaces that enable network programmability and automation of network operations, to reduce operating costs and service delivery times, while promoting new services.
“Infinera’s intelligent transport network enables rapid growth in network capacity while maintaining operational simplicity,” said Niclas Comstedt, director of network engineering at Facebook. “Once we have the equipment, we’ll be able to move as many terabits as we need.”
"Content providers, such as Facebook, are increasing their long-distance capacity at a breakneck pace," commented Alan Mauldin, director of research at TeleGeography. "According to our research, private network capacity in Europe increased by more than 800% between 2010 and 2014."
“I’ve worked with service providers around the world for over a decade to evaluate and install long-range optical transport systems,” said Steve Grubb, a member of Infinera. “The route we’re announcing with Facebook provides several terabits of capacity, and I consider it the world’s longest production route with a capacity of 8 Tb/s.”
“Facebook’s use of Infinera’s intelligent transport network underscores the value Infinera brings to internet content providers and data center operators worldwide,” said Tom Fallon, CEO of Infinera. “Facebook is a classic example of how leading internet content providers are building global networks that interconnect their data centers to accelerate the delivery of high-bandwidth, multi-feature services around the world.”
