DE-CIX provides premium network interconnection services at 28 locations across Europe, Middle East, North America, and Asia. Founded in 1995, DE-CIX’s Internet Exchange in Frankfurt is one of the world’s leading interconnection platforms, managing more than 10 Terabits of traffic per second during peak traffic. The first implementations at DE-CIX Frankfurt have already started with other DE-CIX locations to follow.

Experiencing a yearly traffic growth of about 30% at its exchanges, more during last year’s pandemic lockdowns, DE-CIX needed to upscale its network. To increase network capacity quickly and efficiently, staying ahead of customer expectations, the Internet exchange provider has upgraded its network to 400G based on Smartoptics open line system (https://www.smartoptics.com/products/open-line-systems/).

Dr. Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX, says: “With this latest technological leap, we prepare for the digital future. Having followed Smartoptics’ development as a key advocate for open line systems over the years, we were confident that this was the right choice for us. 400G technologies are an important key to DE-CIX’s future growth in order to prepare for upcoming traffic growth. The new 400G network solution is exciting on several levels. It will enable us to create an entirely new experience for our customers, with simpler and faster service provisioning. Since the new type of network requires fewer infrastructure components, it will also allow us to simplify network architecture and operations – you might even say plug & play – while reducing the cost.”

The solution will be based on the DCP-M40-ZR+ open line system, optimized for coherent 400G connectivity, with embedded optics. DCP-M has the form factor and usability of a passive multiplexer, but, unlike a passive multiplexer, it monitors the traffic, amplifies the signals for longer distances, and can handle higher data rate protocols.

The first implementations of the Smartoptics open line systems at DE-CIX Frankfurt start now, and the rest of the DE-CIX locations will follow.

“We are excited that DE-CIX, as the world’s leading Internet Exchange operator, is showing their confidence in Smartoptics product’s when upgrading and upscaling their mission-critical network. That our solutions for 400G connectivity fits DE-CIX global deployment of open line systems and bandwidth optimized routers is clear proof of our successful strategy for open and disaggregated networking solutions,” says Magnus Grenfeldt, CEO Smartoptics.