Fiber Optic Wavelength Services for San Francisco and Silicon Valley

AboveNet is expanding its high capacity fiber optic network services with new low latency wavelength services serving the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, including key locations in Santa Clara and San Jose, California.

AboveNet’s Core Wave solutions are based on ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer) technology. It offers dynamic wavelength add/drops of multiple protocols that include Ethernet, TDM, storage and video transport. This makes for an array of flexible service options, scalability and fast provisioning.

Compared to legacy network designs, Core Wave shows the path that all fiber optic networks will be taking in the future. Business needs are too dynamic to be straight-jacketed into a few single protocol service levels or difficult to modify equipment configurations. By basing their network on DWDM with ROADM and deploying services via wavelength, AboveNet can offer businesses whatever connectivity they need with the option to make changes and additions easily.

The beauty of wavelengths and ROADM is that you can manage traffic optically, without the need to do an optical to electrical to optical conversion process. This allows you to add a wavelength, drop off a wavelength or simply pass the wavelength (cut-through) without affecting it. The ROADM doesn’t have to know or care what protocol the traffic is on the wavelength because it doesn’t dissect the signal at that level. ROADMs give a whole new meaning to the idea of a “transparent” network.

What type of fiber optic services is AboveNet making available in the San Francisco Bay Area? You have dedicated bandwidth at 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps, with both protected and unprotected options. Multi-protocol support includes Carrier Ethernet at 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE), SONET/SDH at OC-12 (622 Mbps) STM-4, OC-48 (2.5 Gbps) STM-16, and OC-192 (10 Gbps) STM-64. You can also transport the Fibre Channel FC-100, FC-200 and FC-400 standards for SAN (Storage Area Networks). The platform is scalable to 40 Gbps for future connectivity needs.

Core Wave is a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) solution for point to point connectivity between business locations. AboveNet also offers long haul low latency 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps transparent bandwidth from their POP (Point of Presence) to enterprise locations in major metro locations. This fiber optic service bypasses the Local Exchange Carrier loops to keep everything on the AboveNet network and guarantee a full 10 Gbps connectivity. One application of this service, called eXpressWave Long Haul, is to securely connect a corporate data center and backup data center located in different markets. You can order express routing of point to point dedicated circuits with no local stops to your remote locations, as needed.

Are you doing business in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, and require high bandwidth, high reliability fiber optic connectivity? If so, get quotes for fiber optic wavelength services from AboveNet and other competitive carriers serving this area of California. Similar services are also available in other locations nationwide, including low latency connections to international destinations.



Note: Photo of downtown San Francisco courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

AboveNet Core Wave Makes Dedicated Wavelength Bandwidth Available

What do you do when ordinary bandwidth is no longer up to the task? You go above and beyond with AboveNet’s Core Wave service. For demanding financial services, media, health care, retail and government applications, you really do have to get to the core of fiber optic transport. The very core.

Most telecom services are electrically multiplexed somewhere along the way. What multiplexing does is combine your bandwidth service with dozens, hundreds or thousands of others to fill the capacity of a fiber optic core network. But what if you have enough demand on your own to take all the bandwidth a service provider can deliver?

One answer is to become your own service provider. You do this buy building-out or buying fiber strands or even entire fiber optic cables. That’s what Cable TV MSOs do. So do major telecom service providers. But bandwidth is their business. It’s what they do to generate income. You aren’t really in the business of bandwidth. You simply want to use large amounts of bandwidth to enable your business processes. Does investing large amounts of capital in fiber infrastructure really make sense for your corporate mission?

Of course it doesn’t. What does make sense is to partner with a service provider that has already made the investment and has enough bandwidth capacity at their disposal to meet your current and future needs. AboveNet has that capability and now they are making it available to large organizations in major markets.

Let’s take a look at AboveNet Core Wave. It’s a high capacity bandwidth service for point to point connectivity in metro areas, like New York City. Right now you can get 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps service. The platform is scalable, so that when demand justifies it AboveNet can also offer 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps bandwidth services.

How are they doing this? The platform is built on a fiber optic network managed by ROADMs. A ROADM is a Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer. This is the cutting edge of fiber optic networking. What a ROADM does is manage the traffic on the network optically. Each fiber transports not one, but many different light beams known as Lambdas or wavelengths. Each wavelength is said to have a different color, although these are in the infrared spectrum and not visible like the colors from a prism. A ROADM can manage dozens or hundreds of wavelengths in a process known as DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing.

Normally wavelengths have such high carrying capacity that they transport traffic for many companies. But Core Wave gives you the option of having your own dedicated wavelength. The wavelength is like a blank slate to be written on, so you are not forced into the protocol of the core network. AboveNet gives you the choice of Ethernet, SONET/SDH, or Fibre Channel for storage networking.

Are your bandwidth needs pressing the limits of conventional telecom services? If so, perhaps it is time you moved up to fiber optic wavelength services, like AboveNet Core Wave. Why not check pricing and availability now? There is likely more capacity available than you think.