How Outshift and Qunnect demonstrated scalable quantum entanglement networking

TL;DR

The breakthrough: Outshift by Cisco and Qunnect proved that scalable quantum entanglement can run over raw, unshielded commercial metro fiber, moving quantum communications out of controlled labs and directly onto the live city grid.
The real-world impact: Operating across 17.6 km of active New York City fiber, the experiment proves a practical, repeatable blueprint for deploying large-scale quantum internet architectures on existing telecom infrastructure.
Automated orchestration: Outshift's advanced software stack achieved autonomous, picosecond-level coordination across geographically separated nodes, removing the legacy requirement for shared laser links or manual physical tuning.

Industry

Quantum networking hardware

Company Size

Solution

Cisco Quantum Labs networking software stack integrated with Qunnect’s Carina atomic entanglement hardware

Summary

From lab phenomenon to live city grid

If you can make quantum entanglement survive the most chaotic fiber network on Earth, you can deploy it anywhere. Outshift by Cisco and Qunnect moved quantum networking out of the lab and onto 17.6 km of live New York City infrastructure—shattering local benchmarks by nearly 10,000x and proving real-world commercial viability. In a landmark collaboration, Outshift by Cisco and quantum infrastructure pioneer, Qunnect achieved a major breakthrough by demonstrating that scalable quantum entanglement swapping can run over existing commercial metro fiber. This milestone moves quantum technology out of controlled lab environments and onto the live city grid. By combining Qunnect’s room-temperature quantum hardware with Outshift’s advanced quantum networking software stack, the teams successfully established high-speed, high-fidelity entanglement swapping across 17.6 kilometers of telecom fiber beneath New York City. This achievement proves that practical, deployable, and commercially viable quantum networks are possible today using existing telecom infrastructure, laying the foundation for a secure, large-scale global quantum internet.

Challenge

Surviving the noisiest fiber environment on Earth

Quantum states are extraordinarily fragile, and entanglement swapping demands extreme precision: photons from independent sources must arrive at a central node within hundreds of picoseconds, or the “quantum handshake” collapses. Real-world commercial fiber introduces noise, vibrations from subways, temperature fluctuations, and polarization drift that quickly degrade quantum signals. Traditional quantum systems rely heavily on complex cryogenic hardware or physical "tethering"—forcing independent nodes to share a physical laser connection to maintain the sub-nanosecond timing precision required for a successful quantum handshake. To build the quantum internet in the future, networks must operate without these restrictive physical links. Sustaining quantum entanglement across a commercial city grid is a fundamental battle against physics. In an unshielded metropolitan environment, fragile quantum states face extreme environmental noise, sub-nanosecond polarization drift, and thermal fluctuations. Overcoming these physical barriers requires automated network orchestration precise enough to maintain continuous, 24/7 synchronization across geographically separated nodes—without the luxury of shared laboratory laser links.

Outcome

Intelligent automation meets room-temperature hardware
The teams addressed these challenges by deploying a unified, software-defined hardware architecture across the GothamQ testbed in New York City. Qunnect provided the quantum infrastructure, deploying its Carina atomic entanglement sources and room-temperature Automated Polarization Compensators.
Outshift supplied the primary coordination layer: an intelligent quantum networking software stack that serves as a digital air traffic controller for the network. Outshift’s software is tightly integrated with the open source White Rabbit timing protocol to achieve picosecond-level synchronization across geographically separated nodes without shared laser connections. The software fully automated the network workflow by:

Correlation: Processing millions of raw detection events to pinpoint the precise moments photons align.
Coordination: Managing distributed hardware systems through a unified control layer, eliminating the need for manual on-site operation by physicists.
Calibration: Continuously and autonomously aligning nodes around the clock to counteract real-world metropolitan drift.
Data management: Consolidating distributed quantum signals into structured, usable data files for analysis.

This architecture concentrates expensive cryogenic equipment only at central hubs, keeping the endpoint nodes room-temperature, cost-effective, and easy to add to the network. The real-world validation exceeded all benchmarks, establishing a scalable blueprint for continent-spanning quantum networks. By replacing manual, hours-long physical calibration loops with software-defined automation, this project proves the feasibility of running distributed quantum systems with the same reliability expected of classical networks.

If you can make [quantum] entanglement swapping at scale work in New York City—the noisiest, most chaotic fiber on Earth—you can make it work anywhere. This is a milestone the field has been waiting for, and it was proven possible by Cisco and Qunnect.
Mehdi Namazi, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer, Qunnect

Resources

BLOG

From the lab to the city grid: Qunnect and Cisco demonstrate scalable quantum entanglement networking on existing NYC Fiber

- Discover how Cisco and Qunnect validated scalable quantum entanglement swapping on NYC's fiber, overcoming one of the world's toughest environments for quantum signals. - Learn why quantum networks are hard to scale and how Cisco's quantum networking software stack replaces physical tethering with automated, software-defined orchestration. - See how this breakthrough blueprint—featuring room-temperature endpoints, centralized hubs, and software-driven workflow—lays the foundation for global, robust, and commercially viable quantum networks.

WEBINAR

Qunnect and Cisco: Pioneering scalable quantum networking in real-world environments

Join Reza Nejabati, Head of Quantum Research at Cisco Quantum Labs, and Mehdi Namazi. Co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Qunnect, in this exclusive webinar. Learn how advanced quantum networking is unlocking new possibilities for scalable, distributed quantum systems.

WHITEPAPER

High-rate Scalable Entanglement Swapping Between Remote Entanglement Sources on Deployed New York City Fibers

Entanglement swapping between photon pairs generated at physically separated nodes over telecommunication fiber infrastructure is an essential step towards the quantum internet, enabling applications such as quantum repeaters, blind quantum computing, distributed quantum computing, and distributed quantum sensing.

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