Pacnet taps BTI Systems to connect metro data centers with 100 GigE

Pacnet, an Asia-Pacific-based service provider, has selected BTI Systems 7800 Series Intelligent Cloud Connect platforms to interconnect data centers in Hong Kong and Tokyo to keep up with growing demand for cloud-based services.

While it has built a 100G subsea cable network in Asia to support growth in Web 2.0/cloud traffic, the service provider needed more metro network connectivity.

The company recently extended its network to support 100G DWDM connectivity for metro data center interconnectivity using the BTI 7800 Series Intelligent Cloud Connect platforms. By leveraging the 7800 platform, Pacnet will be able to deliver 100 GigE and 10 GigE connections between data centers as it supports the region's major cloud service providers and colocation sites.

Those metro data centers will connect to the subsea landing stations when there's a need to interconnect different metros in different countries.

"What they found is they now needed to upgrade within major metro areas to 100G networking as well to connect data centers together again being driven by Web 2.0 and cloud traffic," said Sally Bament, senior vice president of global marketing for BTI Systems, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "What we have enabled them to do is to offer both 10 GigE and 100 GigE interconnect services in metro regions to their cloud provider or business customers."

A key point of this deployment is about scaling for today and into the future.

Andy Lumsden, Pacnet's CTO, said that the BTI 7800 Series "will enable us to create a high-capacity metro network fabric, supporting 200G per slot now, and scaling to 400G and 1 Tbps per slot in the future."

Bament confirmed they were not only able to help turn up services quickly, but also that the system allows for scaling to higher speeds as needed.

"We were able to help them turn up services very, very quickly and I think they have some demands from their customers to offer 100G services quickly," Bament said. "The 7800 will be able to support higher capacity in the future so obviously today we're 10G and 100G. Each of those line card slots supports 200G today, but they are extensible to 400 and even 1 Tbps in the future."

Pacnet and BTI are hardly strangers as the service provider previously deployed the BTI 7000 Series packet optical transport solution. Being able to announce it won another deal with a large carrier like Pacnet will also up BTI's profile in the optical networking segment that's been traditionally dominated by Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Huawei.

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