Equinix, Facebook and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) are all working together to deploy and test new Facebook-designed packet-optical switches.
Known as Voyager, these switches will be deployed inside two of Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers. Voyager is the first step in Facebook and Equinix’s journey of developing the next-generation network ecosystem for hardware and software.
Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, Director of Engineering at Facebook, says that the open Optical Packet Transport project group within TIP is developing technologies to drive better and broader connectivity globally.
With Equinix’s leadership and support, the Voyager ecosystem will serve as a first ever white box for switching, routing and DWDM in the Wide Area Networks to exemplify a new way of open collaboration and innovation and has been contributed to the TIP community.
By working in conjunction with TIP, Equinix is helping to define the deployment, operational and support models for the new disaggregated and virtual networking infrastructure.
Ihab Tarazi, CTO of Equinix, explains that 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.