By Cameron Daniel, Chief Technology Officer

Discover why 400G is growing in popularity across industries, and how you can deploy it with Megaport.

The Megaport team is excited to introduce 400G ports. This addition to our network offering gives enterprises, cloud builders, and service providers access to ultra-high bandwidth on demand, making it easier than ever to interconnect clouds, data centers, and services at massive scale.

If your IT team is already using 100G bandwidth, the need for 400G might creep up more quickly than you think. Here’s when to consider our ultra-high-bandwidth solution, and the benefits you can expect.

The evolution from 1G to 400G and beyond

Ten years ago, 1 Gbps was sufficient for most branch office connections and 10 Gbps was plenty for the average cloud workload. But bandwidth requirements have scaled dramatically over the past decade.

This growth has been driven by global trends and changes like:

• mid-large business embracing digital transformation and cloud adoption
• the growth of data-intensive applications, accelerated by GPUs, AI, and ML
• the growing complexity of hybrid and multicloud architectures
• advancing network infrastructure and fiber optic technology
• globalising remote workforces, with applications and users distributed across edge networks.

In the midst of all these variables, customers aren’t just scaling vertically – they’re connecting more locations, clouds, and services, often concurrently, multiplying the pressure on their network bandwidth.

When it comes to high-bandwidth network interconnection, 100G is the current norm for most use cases, but we’re seeing a shift – according to Dell’Oro Group, 400G deployments are expected to have increased fourfold between 2023 and 2028.

All of this means businesses and service providers can do more, faster and more efficiently, without a linear increase in complexity.

Industries and use cases for 400G

If you’re in a bandwidth-heavy, latency-sensitive, or data-reliant industry and you’re already using 100G bandwidth, it may be worth considering the upgrade to 400G.

The most impacted industries include:

• Cloud providers and SaaS companies: Support backbone interconnects between cloud regions or data centers.
• Media and entertainment: Move 4K and 8K video content, render pipelines, and stream live events.
• AI/ML adopters: Connect training clusters, storage arrays, and GPU instances with high throughput and low latency.
• Financial services: Support ultra-low-latency trading systems and facilitate fast access to analytics platforms.
• Healthcare and life sciences: Use for genome sequencing, telemedicine, and massive imaging datasets.

And some popular use cases with 400G capabilities include:

• Internet Exchanges: Where traffic volumes are high enough to justify connecting at this bandwidth, 400G makes IX connectivity far easier and more efficient.
• DCI networks: In a data center interconnect or cloud on-ramp scenario, 400G is a great alternative to multiple 100G connections.
• Real-time AI model training across regions: Training LLMs or AI pipelines in parallel cloud regions with consistent throughput.
• Ultra-fast disaster recovery and replication: Enterprises can replicate terabytes of data across continents in real time.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) at scale: Supports streaming virtual workspaces with high-resolution media and low latency.
• Advanced telemedicine and AR/VR: In fields like remote surgery or collaborative 3D environments, 400G reduces jitter and latency, improving real-time experiences.

Conclusion

For enterprise network teams struggling to match their network to data-heavy operations, real-time applications, and global scale, 400G connectivity is a natural next step.

With Megaport’s 400G ports now live in select locations, customers can upgrade to scalable, ultra-high-bandwidth connections in just 60 seconds for their fastest, most reliable network yet.

Deploy 400G in the Megaport Portal