Lumen Technologies is deploying a routing optical network on its fiber backbone, bringing 400 Gbit/s connectivity to over 70 data centers in 16 metropolitan markets.

Dave Ward, chief technology officer and product officer of Lumen, told Light Reading that the service provider was providing Internet Protocol (IP) and Ethernet services based on routing optical network, “using all the bandwidth and capacity in our optical network”, rather than adopting a convergence model with a central hub as the network core.

“By adopting a routing optical network, we have achieved an order of magnitude increase in routing capacity anywhere we have fiber optics, and the cost of transmitting each bit has been reduced by two to three orders of magnitude,” Ward said.

According to Ward, although Lumen’s network has connected over 2200 data centers, this upgrade offers a 400GB upgrade and integration with Lumen Digital (Lumen’s on-demand IP and Ethernet services).

We are truly committed to building that cloud core and making it truly accessible, “he said. This is actually building those cloud core components to reduce complexity for customers and provide engineered bandwidth, latency, and redundant paths. ”

Multi vendor network

Ward explained that Lumen’s 400G deployment collaborates with multiple vendors, including Cisco’s routing optical network, Juniper’s data center routers, Ciena’s long-distance optical transmission equipment, and Corning’s fiber itself. Lumen also uses pluggable optical modules, and as demand grows, the company can replace them from 400G to 800G or 1.6T as needed.

Lumen has long-term partnerships with many of these suppliers. For example, the company announced in February that it would use Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) 1.6 Tb/s coherent transceiver to support the growing demand for running AI workloads, and in May announced a partnership with Corning to build fiber optic infrastructure in western North Carolina to address the “AI boom” and expand network capacity.

Ward stated that as enterprise clients “join the AI economy,” Lumen is providing a network to transmit their data to the locations where they want to train AI or develop inference workloads.

Lumen stated that the 400G service is provided through usage based pricing, allowing customers to connect data centers and cloud portals, expand enterprise applications, and run AI workloads. This deployment covers 16 metropolitan markets including Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio (launched in Q4 of this year), San Jose, and Seattle.

The services provided on Lumen’s 400G network and Lumen Digital include Ethernet On Demand, Internet On Demand, point-to-point Ethernet E-Line for data transmission, multipoint to multipoint Ethernet E-LAN supporting site connection, and E-Access for accessing wider Ethernet networks.

“We not only collaborate with data center operators, but also with hyperscale cloud providers to improve speed and access to all locations where our customers own their workloads and where they want their workloads and data to be,” Ward said.

Lumen’s overall network provides connectivity to major cloud providers and 163000 online customer locations. By 2028, Lumen plans to expand its network to 47 million intercity fiber miles.