SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- The Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC) has selected Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN) for a regional optical network linking 9 states from Washington to Illinois. The new network will provide the 27 member universities with the speed, flexibility and intelligence of Infinera’s Digital Optical Networks.

With endpoints in Seattle, Washington and Chicago, Illinois, the Northern Tier Network Consortium network links the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. The new network will be used to provide multi-wavelength networking resources to researchers at member institutions and to provide connectivity to the nationwide Internet2 network.

The NTNC Consortium members chose Infinera for the system’s flexibility in meeting the needs of the research community and its ease of service delivery. With Infinera’s photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which integrate 60 optical devices on a pair of chips each less than 5 mm wide, the Infinera optical system provides 100 Gigabits/second of capacity on every line card. In addition the intelligence of Infinera’s GMPLS-powered network operating system makes the Infinera system easy and quick to install and add capacity.

“Members of the Northern Tier Network Consortium went through a very rigorous selection process and Infinera came out on top,” said Bonnie Neas, Vice President for Information Technology at North Dakota State University. Features that impressed them included the simplicity of deploying the Infinera platform, the wide range of services it supports, the ease of adding new services to the platform, and the responsiveness of Infinera’s customer support team. Ms. Neas said she was particularly impressed with how quickly an Infinera network can be installed and provisioned, in comparison with many other long-haul systems which can take weeks. “Infinera was literally provisioned on Day One,” she said.

Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN)