NTT claims to have essentially combined two data centers separated by nearly 100 kilometers by using novel techniques to reduce connection latency.
NTT Data and NTT Corporation used an all-photonic network (APN) to connect and transmit between data centers north and east of London.
Using APN, the researchers recorded a round-trip delay of less than a millisecond. A similar demonstration at data centers located in Northern Virginia achieved similar results, the firm said.
According to NTT Data, the goal of the initiative is to transform geographically distributed IT infrastructure into the functional equivalent of a single data center.
“The data center market is under severe local constraints. Restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions and land scarcity have made it difficult to build data centers in urban areas, forcing operators to turn to the suburbs” , the company said in a statement.
“However, with geographically distant data centers, communication delay or latency can be very high, making it difficult to meet customers' low latency needs.”
The UK demonstration involved connecting the HH2 and Lon1 data centers in Hemel Hempstead and Dagenham respectively, which are 89 kilometers apart.
NTT said tests conducted on 100 Gbps and 400 Gbps links showed that the two APN-connected data centers in the United Kingdom operated with just 0.9 milliseconds of latency and with a delay variation, or jitter, of less than 0.1 microsecond.
A typical current value over that distance, according to cloud connectivity provider Megaport, would be two milliseconds.
The company said the advantage of using APN in this capacity is that lines can be activated by simply adding wavelengths without the need to install new dark fiber, allowing data center operators to respond very quickly to customer demand. customers.
NTT sees the network as particularly useful for emerging use cases such as real-time distributed AI analytics, including industrial IoT and predictive maintenance, smart surveillance systems, smart grids and energy management, and natural disaster detection and response.
It is also demonstrating in the financial sector, where low latency is required for remittances, settlements and transactions.
The difficulty of finding suitable sites for data centers is becoming more pressing, as construction permits are often denied for environmental or other reasons.
The problem is particularly evident in Ireland, home to several large technology companies. According to figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO), data center electricity consumption increased by a third between 2021 and 2022, and by 400% since 2015.
Since 2021, permission for new data centers is only granted to those that have a suitable location, the ability to use backup generators, and the ability to reduce power consumption when requested.
In the long term, data center operators could leverage APN to relieve pressure.
“Network performance can bridge geographically distributed data centers, addressing real estate constraints and green energy requirements,” he said.
