Infinera names its first customer

Infinera announced the first customer for its DTN wavelength-division transport system Monday.

German Internet service provider FreeNet has deployed Infinera's system on a nationwide optical backbone ring, providing 2.5-Gb/s and 10-Gb/s trunks for its IP routers. About two dozen DTNs began carrying live traffic over the 1800-km network in December.

Infinera's DTNs, which can carry 400 Gb/s in a half-rack chassis, use the company's own "photonic integrated circuits" to reduce the cost of optical-electrical-optical conversions, offering an economic alternative to all-optical networking that doesn't sacrifice digital management. The start-up equipment vendor hopes FreeNet serves as proof of the viability of this new approach.

"Here's an example of photonic integrated circuits just humming along carrying mainstream traffic for a major service provider," an Infinera spokesperson said. "Six million of [FreeNet's] customers are using this backbone."

Infinera exited stealth mode in April 2004 and announced $52 million in new funding six months later, raising its total funding to $205 million.

The company wouldn't quantify how many equipment trials it is currently engaged in other than to say it was more than five.