Lumen Technologies has announced a new network interconnection ecosystem called ExaSwitch, created in collaboration with Google and Microsoft. This platform enables organizations with high bandwidth requirements to dynamically and quickly route traffic between networks without third-party intervention.
This ExaSwitch project was created by the initial participants to route traffic between large internet and cloud networks. Early adopters include Lumen, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and another large cloud provider. As more participants join, the ExaSwitch ecosystem will continue to strengthen, making it easier to automate, scale, and manage capacity among members.
ExaSwitch administrators will install optical hardware in each participant’s preferred location, and participants will choose their own fiber source to connect to ExaSwitch. When two participants agree to connect, they can quickly join through self configuring or administrator driven and managed API portals. Real time capacity deployment enables them to easily order, modify, and delete services as needed. Lumen acts as the administrator for the initial deployment.
Participants use self-service portals to configure and open connections with other participants, which is much faster than now.
The connection is established in 400G increments and can be consumed as needed in 100G increments. Each site can achieve a maximum of 25.6 Tbps optical cross connection.
Participants will have the ability to connect their edge sites, data centers, and central offices in major markets to gain diversity and save on cross connect costs.