ESnet Taps Ciena for 400G Research and Education Network

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) recently deployed Ciena’s (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings) 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipsets, to support its new 400G network. The network will give ESnet the highest levels of transmission available on the market to support NERSC’s 6,000 users as the facility moves to a new location during the next year. ESnet will also use the network to support advanced research on the impact and performance of big data transmission over a variety of fiber and photonic topologies, as well as within high-performance computing systems.

Key Facts:

• ESnet connects tens of thousands of DOE Office of Science researchers at more than 40 U.S. laboratories and supercomputing facilities to research partners around the world. The network currently carries approximately 34 petabytes of data each month. Traffic on the network has increased an average of 10 times every four years, propelled by the rising tide of data produced by supercomputers, global collaborations that involve thousands of researchers, and specialized facilities like the Large Hadron Collider and digital sky surveys. It is expected that ESnet will need to carry more than 60 petabytes of data per month by 2016.

• The 400G network will provide NERSC with uninterrupted connectivity during its transition to a new site located on the main campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. It will also support advanced research projects on topics ranging from cosmology to genomics to materials, in addition to generating massive datasets from scientific modeling and simulation.
• ESnet has also established a 400G testbed, utilizing fiber from Level 3 Communications, to assess the use of flexible grid technologies, which are being developed to allow service providers to extract additional capacity out of fiber spectrum. The testbed allows ESnet to provide advanced network architecture insights to share with other universities, national laboratories and service providers building next generation networks.

• Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipset features 16QAM modulation, which doubles system traffic capacity with 200Gb/s per wavelength and allows for a simple-to-deploy dual subcarrier 400G solution. In addition, Ciena’s Flexible Grid technologies allow ESnet to utilize incremental increases in capacity with the ability to pack more wavelengths on a fiber.

• Ciena and ESnet have a long-standing partnership. In 2011, ESnet and Internet2 deployed a 100G transcontinental research network powered by the 6500 platform that delivers 8.8Tb/s capacity over a nationwide footprint.

Executive Comments:

• “DOE’s Energy Sciences Network, better known as ESnet, has a mission to improve science outcomes by breaking down barriers of geography and making it easier for researchers around the globe to collaborate and share data. Ciena has been instrumental in providing the technology and expertise to support our network, and the new 400G solution will ensure we are able to handle anticipated traffic growth driven by data-intensive collaborations in physics, biology, materials science, climate science and many other fields.”
  – Greg Bell, Director, ESnet

• “Scientific research requires gathering, analyzing and transporting extremely large volumes of data among multiple locations. Ciena’s 6500 with WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipsets is ideally suited to support the intense scalability requirements for these research networks. This deployment gives ESnet the power to explore state-of-the-art network transmission and high-scale networking at an unprecedented level, and provides a foundation to support continued capacity growth to Terabit scale in the future.”
  – Rod Wilson, Senior Director of External Research, Ciena

Supporting Resources:

• Product Overview: 6500 Packet-Optical Platform
• Product Overview: WaveLogic Photonics
• Brochure: New Coherent Chipsets for a Web-scale World
• Video: WaveLogic 3 Extreme

About ESnet
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is a high-performance, unclassified network built to support scientific research. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) and managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ESnet provides services to more than 40 DOE research sites, including the entire National Laboratory system, its supercomputing facilities, and its major scientific instruments. ESnet also connects to 140 research and commercial networks, permitting DOE-funded scientists to productively collaborate with partners around the world. For more information please visit https://www.es.net/.

About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPⁿ architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter @Ciena or LinkedIn. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use.

Note to Ciena Investors
Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena’s actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 9, 2015. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena’s expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “should,” “will,” and “would” or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Kacie Levy
Ciena Corporation
(877) 857-7377
klevy@ciena.com