AT&T activates first 400G circuit on Dallas/Atlanta route

AT&T activated its first 400-gigabit optical connection on a Dallas-to-Atlanta fiber route -- an industry first for a 400G long haul commercial link, according to the company.

The 400G trunk is now carrying live Internet traffic for customers. This connection – between Dallas and Atlanta – is believed to be a first in the industry.

The 400G Dallas/Atlanta facility was deployed on an SDN-enabled Ultra Long Haul (ULH) system from Ciena. The 400G circuit was routed and configured completely through software using Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller. The 400G transport was terminated in the Dallas and Atlanta offices by a white box router from UfiSpace that is compliant with the Broadcom Jericho2 Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) design that AT&T recently submitted to the Open Compute Project (OCP). 400G pluggable transceivers from InnoLight were installed in the white box router and Ciena transponder to create the cross-office connectivity between the packet and optical technologies. Ciena’s MCP controller is integrated into AT&T’s ONAP management and control framework using an Application Programming Interface (API) specified by the Open ROADM Multi-Source Agreement (MSA).

The optical transport system consists of a new 400G transponder based on Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai coherent optical technology. The Ciena Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexors (ROADMs) have been upgraded with new software to support a sophisticated feature known as flex grid. This allows us, through software control, to optimize the allocation of spectrum on the long-haul fiber based on the required speed and reach of each wavelength. The Broadcom Jericho2 white box was supplied by UfiSpace and provides 10 x 400G interfaces on a 2RU “pizza box”. The white box uses the Broadcom Jericho2 packet processing chip, a state-of-the-art chip designed to meet the demanding needs of a service provider.

“The move from a 100G interface to 400G is a milestone for the communications industry, because it means we can continue to stay ahead of the tsunami of data demand we’ve seen over the last decade-plus,” said Andre Fuetsch, executive vice president and chief technology officer, AT&T. “This accomplishment also speaks to the tremendously collaborative ecosystem we’ve helped foster with key innovators in optical technology, white box hardware, and software-defined networking. Ciena, UfiSpace, Broadcom, and InnoLight have brought great ideas and technologies to bear to make 400G a reality.”

“We are very proud to collaborate with AT&T on the design of the white boxes based on Broadcom’s Jericho2,” said Vincent Ho, general manager of UfiSpace. “In spite of the complexity and difficulty with the design from an electrical, mechanical, and thermal perspective, we’ve used our breadth of understanding in networking to overcome the challenges rolling out the first 400G carrier-scale white box solution. UfiSpace is very excited to be amidst the first to participate and contribute to this new paradigm. We are thankful to AT&T for their leadership in building a robust and open white box ecosystem.”