Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
By Robert Sears, Associate Vice President for Network Services
In the rapidly advancing era of quantum computing, traditional encryption methods that safeguard security and privacy no longer suffice. Foreshadowing the need to adapt quickly, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports that quantum devices capable of breaking current encryption methods could emerge within the next decade.
For the Internet2 community — with members representing higher education, research facilities, federal government, non-profit organizations, and industry collaborators — staying ahead of quantum threats to cybersecurity is critical. One of the answers lies in quantum-safe encryption methods and leveraging the modernized, hyperscale networks needed to support them.
Internet2 and industry member Ciena, along with Ciena’s partner, Purism, recently demonstrated a breakthrough in post-quantum cryptography (PQC) for data in transit on the Internet2 national backbone. The demo results showcase a secure, future-ready, network drop-in approach to protecting data as it moves long-haul distances across research and education (R&E) networks.
Post-Quantum Readiness: A Cybersecurity Imperative
For the R&E community, the stakes of the quantum shift and its impacts on cybersecurity are high. Consider the impacts on:
- Universities handling student records, research, and other protected data
- Research labs managing federally funded projects, health data, and intellectual property
- Federal government entities facilitating inter-agency collaborations and conducting missions related to protecting public safety, infrastructure, and national security
- Industry leaders developing advanced AI systems in collaboration with government and R&E institutions
The time for post-quantum readiness across the R&E community is now.
This urgency is echoed at the highest levels of government. The March 2026 White House Cyber Strategy for America explicitly calls for PQC adoption alongside zero trust, cloud, and AI-powered protections. Furthermore, a federal mandate requires the transition to PQC to be completed by 2035, and by 2030 for high-value assets within federal agencies.
In August 2024, NIST released three encryption standards designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer. One of those standards, FIPS 203, provided the cryptographic foundation for the Internet2 collaborative demo.
The Demo: Quantum-Safe Traffic on the Internet2 Backbone
On March 12, engineers from Internet2 worked with Ciena and its partner, Purism, to test PQC algorithms across a long-haul segment of the Internet2 national R&E network. The segment spanned 1,390 miles between Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Las Vegas, Nevada, traversing the longest optical path between these cities along the Internet2 backbone.
The goal was to prove that Internet2’s hyperscale network could be leveraged to achieve quantum-safe, multi-point, high-throughput encryption, both in transit and at rest (data in transit captured and stored remains PQC-protected at rest) — without compromising performance.
Key technical outcomes included:
- NIST-Standardized Security: A FIPS 203-compliant solution was used for both quantum-safe encryption and quantum-safe key exchange. Testing conducted by cryptographers at a third-party organization in the R&E community validated the solution.
- Hardware and Software Integration: The demo solution integrated a Ciena routing and switching platform with the production Internet2 backbone, which is built on the Ciena transport platform. Purism’s quantum-safe key exchange and encryption software running on the router enabled round-trip encryption and decryption across the path.
- Testing and Validation: Using open source tools like Wireshark, packet captures were pulled at various points of the demo to mimic a man-in-the-middle scenario, validating that traffic leaving the Ciena router and entering the Internet2 backbone could not be observed in readable format at any point in transit. This also validated that any data captured and stored remains PQC-protected, as only a preconfigured, validated participant via key exchange can decrypt it.
- Line Rate Speeds: The demo achieved PQC for data in transit at 10 Gbps line‑rate speed with low overhead, 60 bytes/frame. While this test utilized 10 Gbps, the architecture is designed to scale from 10 to 100-400 Gbps.
- Multi-Point Flexibility: Unlike point-to-point and application-layer encryption, the demonstrated technology supports multi-point to multi-point encrypted communication with a unified architecture.
- Zero Impact on Network Performance: The results showed ultra-low latency of less than 1 millisecond, low jitter of less than 1 millisecond, and zero packet loss using industry-leading optical testing, monitoring, assurance, and measurement tools.
For the Internet2 community, this demo highlights that the network can be used as an option for securing long-haul data transit against quantum threats. By successfully validating PQC on the Internet2 backbone without compromising speed or performance, we have demonstrated the technology’s readiness for real‑world federal, research, and education use cases.
Importantly, this demonstration sets the foundation for future service offerings to enable Internet2 to provide PQC where it delivers the most value to members’ specific applications and risk profiles, with capacity increases to 100 Gbps and higher. Please contact networkdevelopment@internet2.edu if you would like to learn more.
No one knows exactly when quantum computers will break current encryption methods. But as we move closer to the 2030-2035 milestone, Internet2 is committed to providing the hyperscale infrastructure and capabilities our members need in the quantum era, with industry collaboration remaining an important component of community innovation.
Stay tuned for future blogs as we progress in this space. We also look forward to sharing deeper technical insights on this new solution with the community at the 2026 Internet2 Technology Exchange, Oct. 26-30 in Minneapolis.
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