ESnet6 Upgrades, Leverages Ciena Gear to Hit 46Tbps

ESnet has launched the latest iteration of its next-generation network backbone. ESnet6 is the U.S. Department of Energy’s research & development network and is headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It connects up all the national laboratories, supercomputing centers, researches, and instruments, enabling the processing and sharing of massive data sets.

The newly upgraded network has more than 46Tbps of potential capacity, but more importantly will take advantage of the latest in automation and network intelligence technologies in order to better support multi-petabyte data flows. The current iteration of ESnet carried 1.1 exabytes of scientific data in 2021, and the system has seen traffic growth of 10x every four years.

ESnet6 is built off of 15,000 route miles of fiber, largely from Lumen I believe. The latest iteration leverages Ciena’s coherent optical technology to achieve its 46Tbps benchmark as well as 100GbE and 400GbE interconnectivity. They also collaborate with Infinera, Nokia, and AMD for various parts of the underlying technology.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Telecom Equipment