The first petabit network ever created

Other players have announced their intention to build a pan-European fibre optic network. However i-21 is the only company with the existing European resources, the rights of way and the local presence to achieve this during the year 2000.

Going live in May 2000, the i-21 network will provide a virtually limitless supply of state-of-the-art fibre optic capacity and offer all the bandwidth and connectivity needed to transmit data, voice and real-time video – reliably, securely and cost effectively. When fully built, i-21 will be able to carry over a petabit (1,000 terabits per second) of traffic – the first network ever built to do this.

i-21 will be the biggest fibre optic network in Europe and among the largest in the world, covering 70 cities in 17 countries with 200 points of presence. It will also be the first pan-European network with an extension to Moscow.

The i-21 network will include a number of major in-country networks. Designed as a series of in-country rings, i-21 will interconnect at all the key points in each country. Additional points of presence can be added at little cost.

i-21 is based on IP, which is a highly effective and flexible networking protocol. IP uses packet switching instead of circuit switching and is therefore highly efficient in the way it uses bandwidth.

In addition, i-21’s SDH protected ring architecture removes the need for a meshed topology, as calls are always routed via the quickest route. This helps increase speed and maintain a constant level of service. If there is an outage, the traffic is automatically re-routed – within a fraction of a second.

What’s more, our state-of-the-art, highly-integrated operations systems will allow us to provide, manage, monitor and repair circuits and services – quickly and easily.

The i-21 network will use the latest G.655 (non-zero dispersion shifted) fibre. Using this high-specification technology reduces the costs of regenerating the optical signals and enables i-21 and its dark fibre customers to maximise the bandwidth per fibre.

We believe that the language barrier is one of the key factors limiting the growth of the Internet in Europe. So, in addition to providing each country with its own high-capacity network, we will establish telehousing sites with peering centre facilities in the main capital cities. It’s our way of enabling users within each country to establish their own user community – in their own language.

Our answers to Frequently Asked Questions will tell you more about the i-21 network. In particular, it explains how the network can carry a petabit of traffic and gives more information about the network's special features and the fibre optic cable it uses.

You can also see for yourself how the i-21 network is taking shape.