Fiber connectivity specialist Infinera has started shipping its Cloud Xpress family of optical devices, designed to maximize bandwidth between geographically separate data centers connected to the same Metro Area Network (MAN).

Using the latest super-channel technology, the new hardware offers 1Tbps of I/O capacity in a standard 2U box.

"The Infinera Cloud Xpress marks a better way to bring innovative intelligent transport network solutions to the metro Cloud market by delivering a purpose built product with the right form factor, space and power profile,” said Stuart Elby, senior vice president of cloud network strategy and technology at Infinera.

The transport network
Infinera designs and manufactures fiber optic equipment for the service provider market. Most of its products are built around wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) – technology which allows sending a number of carrier signals down a single strand of optical fiber by using different colors (and wavelengths) of laser light.

In order to work, WDM requires multiplexers and demultiplexers at each end of a connection. This technology has been a favorite with carriers and data center operators, since it enables them to increase the capacity of the network without laying new cable.

And that’s exactly the target market for Infinera’s latest product. Cloud Xpress was announced in autumn as a compact, stackable platform that can offer up to 500Gbps of line-side capacity with a mix of 10 GbE, 40 GbE and 100 GbE client-side interfaces. According to the company, it also uses less power than a toaster.

Cloud Xpress is based on super-channel technology – an evolution of WDM which combines coherent optical fibers into a unified channel with a higher data rate. What makes Infinera’s proposition unique is that the company produces its own photonic integrated circuits, instead of relying on third-party discrete optical components like many of its competitors do.

Infinera says Cloud Xpress simplifies the deployment of high-bandwidth connections between geographically separate data centers – something that will become more important as the amount of global traffic grows.

According to the Cisco Cloud Index, annual global data center IP traffic will reach 7.7 zettabytes by the end of 2017, when nearly two-thirds of all workloads will be processed in the cloud.

Last year, Infinera and research network operator DANTE set the Guinness World Record for the fastest provisioning of long-haul multi-Terabit transmission capacity. Using the GEANT academic network, two organisations set up an 8Tbps optical connection between Amsterdam and Hamburg in just 19 minutes and one second.

According to Infinera, 8Tbps is equal to the total capacity of the Internet in 2005.