Equinix, the global interconnection and data center company, announced that it is working with Facebook and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to deploy and test the Facebook-designed packet-optical switches, known as Voyager, inside two of its International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers.
Voyager is a combination of compute, switch, router and DWDM transport technologies. Preliminary results showed zero packet loss and significant overall cost savings due to this disaggregated hardware and software networking model, said Equinix.
As part of the TIP "Open Optical Packet Transport" project group, Equinix worked closely with Facebook to field-test this next-generation packet-optical networking technology. Equinix said it will continue to work with Facebook and other vendors to include TIP-based hardware and software in their architectures as they deploy inside Equinix and develop the TIP ecosystem.
Announced in February 2016 at Mobile World Congress, the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) was launched as a way for leading technology providers to develop new technologies and rethink approaches to deploying network architecture in order to support emerging 5G networking, IoT and virtual reality use cases.
Ihab Tarazi, CTO, Equinix
This emerging world of disaggregated optical networking will need a physical aggregation point where all the hardware and software can come together. With Equinix's rich history in network and cloud neutrality, it makes perfect sense that Equinix be the place where CSPs, NSPs and the TIP hardware and software vendors can join together to deploy next-generation networks.
Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, Director of Engineering, Facebook
The Open Optical Packet Transport project group within TIP is developing technologies in an open community approach with the goal to drive better and broader connectivity globally.
