Nokia won a contract to supply a bevy of its FP4 routers to Equinix that will allow the interconnection giant to replace its legacy multi-vendor networks with a consolidated IP/MPLS network.

Describing the effort as a network overhaul, Nokia said Equinix plans to use its proprietary silicon across all of its 210 colocation facilities spread across five continents. The Finnish vendor is also supplying its Service Router Operating System to provide Equinix with additional routing technologies, including Ethernet VPNs and segment routing. 

The companies claim the new network infrastructure will lay a foundation for Equinix to deploy 5G services requiring low latency, high capacity, and automation.

“An FP4-powered next generation network combined with other Equinix product offerings enable mobile network operators the opportunity to deploy 5G faster with wider coverage and less upfront capital,” Pete Moyer, principal consulting engineer at Nokia, wrote in an email response to questions.

“Mobile operators will still need to assemble 5G capabilities themselves but could leverage the Equinix infrastructure,” including colocation servers or interconnection services, he explained. “The IP/MPLS backbone provided by Nokia will provide the interconnection inside and between Equinix’s data centers."

The project began in early 2019 with a series of extensive tests, and “the deployment is in progress and ongoing," Moyer said. "The ultimate quantity of FP4-powered routers is unknown at this time as this will be a multi-year effort.”

Nokia unveiled the FP4 routing platform in mid 2017, earning praise for silicon that claimed to be six times more powerful than any other network processors on the market at the time. 

“We see tremendous opportunity in providing our customers with 5G services, but this poses special demands for our network, from ultra-low latency to ultra broadband performance, all with business- and mission-critical reliability,” Muhammad Durrani, director of IP architecture at Equinix, said in a statement. Nokia’s FP4 routers will provide the “highly dynamic and programmable network fabric we need,” he added.

Nokia declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal with Equinix.

Equinix this week also announced Equinix Metal, an automated bare metal service now available in four metros that it plans to expand to 14 metros by early 2021. Built upon the bare metal and edge computing startup Packet, a company Equinix acquired for $335 million earlier this year, the service allows enterprises to deploy hybrid multi-cloud architectures with dedicated servers.

Equinix Metal is fully programmable via APIs and common libraries, is natively integrated to Equinix Fabric, and supports integrations to DevOps, hybrid cloud, and open-source software like Kubernetes, the company said, adding that the service can be deployed in under 15 minutes.