We’ve been hearing a lot about 100G networks for over a year and a half. After numerous demos and tests, though, the honors of being first to market goes to Nortel, which with Verizon rolled out the space’s first 100-gigabit-per-second deployment in Europe. Enterprise Networking Planet takes a look.
 Verizon’s Norel OME 6500 with 100G cards installed. Source: Nortel. Click on the graphic to enlarge. |
The promise of 100-gigabit-per-second (100G) networks is no longer just a promise: It’s a deployed, in-production reality.
Nortel and Verizon today jointly announced the deployment of a commercial 100G network between Paris and Frankfurt.
The new link marks the commercial availability of 100G from Nortel and the production use debut of 100G in a live network. The technical and business milestone comes at challenging time for Nortel, which has been under bankruptcy protection since January. The company’s Metro Networking unit which produces the 100G solution, is set to be acquired by Ciena for $769 million.
“It’s not every day we have a one-two punch, with the first commercially available 100G and then a customer the size of Verizon that goes out and launches with us,” Mike Adams, portfolio strategy and marketing leader at Nortel, told InternetNews.com.
“We’re very excited — over the moon, in fact. This has taken years of work to accomplish.”