Nokia Selected in New York for Ethernet Upgrade

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2025 – A new internet project in New York will create the largest internet exchange in the U.S. northeast.

Deutsche Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX) announced that it has been working with Nokia to improve the network capacity in N.Y. to handle 400 gigabits per second (Gbps) by June. The company also announced that it is working to try to get the project ready for 800 Gbps as well.

Thomas King, DE-CIX Chief Technology Officer, said the project will help sustain ever-growing internet demands. 

“Bandwidth is growing 20 percent per year and we want to make sure we can support that for our customers,” King said.

A big driver in the decision to upgrade was the development that individual data centers will be upgrading to 400 Gbps Ethernet shortly. This increase will cause a substantial rise in data traffic to internet exchange providers (IXP). If data centers ran at a faster rate than the IXPs could provide, centers would have to split the signal and cause mass inefficiencies.

Jimmy Yu, an analyst at the Dell’Oro Group, said, “The whole AI thing is driving the 800G upgrade cycle,” a capacity that DE-CIX is committed to reaching.