Wavelengths for Multi-Clouds & AI Workloads

By: John Shepler

Are your connectivity demands so stringent that even Gigabit and 10GigE fiber optic lines are inadequate? Rather that simply adding additional point to point or Internet connections, you should seriously consider moving up to wavelength services.

What is a Wavelength?
Unlike traditional copper MAN and WAN circuits that directly carry electrical signals, fiber optics first converts those pulses to bursts of laser light that travel down glass fibers to a termination where they are reconverted back to electrical signals.

A fiber circuit can use a single laster at a particular frequency or color. Multiple lasers can also use the same fiber at the same time as long as they are running at different frequencies or colors. Another designation for the frequency is in terms of wavelength of the color.

These aren’t colors you can see. They are in the infrared spectrum. A device called a dense wavelength division multiplexer (DWDM) does the conversion, assigns signals to particular wavelengths, and creates the composite laser beam that feeds the fiber. There may be dozens to hundreds of wavelengths on each fiber strand.


Advantages of Wavelength Services
Think of a wavelength as your own private path from one point to another. There may be other signals on other wavelengths on the same fiber, but they have no access to your particular wavelength. This naturally increases the security of your transmission. If you need even more security the data can be encrypted prior to transmission and decrypted at the far end.

Wavelengths are a Layer 1 service. That is, they run at the physical level. There are no routers or switches in the path. The wavelength simply goes from one point to another unimpeded. Over very long distances, optical amplification may be used to keep the beam intense, but it stays optical. A big advantage of wavelengths compared to other transmission systems is that latency is very, very low. It’s really determined by the speed of light over the path distance.

Wavelengths are protocol independent. The beam doesn’t care about the format of the data and you are not dealing with switches or routers in the path. Your protocol is determined by the equipment you have at each end.

Wavelength service speeds have increased from the early days of multiplexing so you can typically achieve 10 Gbps, 100 Gbps, 400 Gbps per channel. Future improvements will include 800 Gbps and 1.4 Tbps.

Wavelengths also tend to be highly reliable, as there is less equipment in the path from end to end. Service Level Agreements to 5-nines or 99.999% up-time are available.

Applications That Benefit From Wavelengths
Bandwidths that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago are now simply not enough. One reason is the mass migration from local data centers to the cloud. Larger companies now use multi-clouds to handle their workload. Any shortage of bandwidth or congestion on the line slow performance and productivity.

Wavelengths are great for cloud on-ramps or direct cloud connections. They offer the speed, security, dedicated access, reliability and low latency needed to make the cloud act like it is right next door. Wavelengths can also be used as dedicated on-ramps to the Internet, completely bypassing the “first mile” congestion common with other Internet access.

Data center interconnects can benefit from wavelength services to synchronize databases, perform backups and replicate data in real time. Likewise, wavelengths are high performance dedicated lines between company locations in the metro area or nationwide.

Artificial Intelligence workload are the latest high demand application and their needs are nearly insatiable. Wavelengths provide the bandwidth and low latency to keep up with the processing speed of AI.

Financial services particularly benefit from wavelength services ultra low latency as well as high capacity. As trading speeds increase, each millisecond of delay eliminated translates directly into dollars.

Could your enterprise benefit by moving up to wavelength services? Discover the choices and pricing available for your business locations.

Fiber - Dark, Lit and Wavelength

By: John Shepler

You’ve made up your mind that a fiber optic connection to your business is no longer a luxury. It is essential to productivity. Now the question is which type of fiber to order. What? There is more than one type of fiber?

One Strand, Multiple Options
All fiber optic connections are based on the principle that modulated light waves carry information guided through a glass strand. The fiber cable coming into your building will look the same. What changes is how you terminate it.

Basically, there are three fiber options. You can order lit fiber service, dark fiber, and wavelength service. Which you pick depends on your bandwidth, security, and control requirements. Let’s see how the three compare.

Lit Fiber Bandwidth
Lit fiber bandwidth is what we normally think of when we’re talking about fiber optic service. You are leasing a service that provides a certain amount of bandwidth, usually with guarantees as to the latency, jitter, packet loss and availability.

How this is done is handled by the service provider. They will terminate a fiber strand into customer premises equipment at your location. You connect your network via fiber or copper connection, depending on the bandwidth level.

Early fiber optic implementations were based on the SONET optical carrier system and needed a specially designed interface for each service level. Today, most fiber service uses Carrier Ethernet and is good for any bandwidth up to the speed of the port that you have installed. Most companies opt for Gigabit or 10 Gigabit Ethernet, although you can often specify up to 100 Gbps in major metro areas.

You pay based on the speed of service you request. One nice feature of Carrier Ethernet or Ethernet over Fiber, as it is also called, is that the bandwidth is easily adjusted. You can install a Gigabit port and order and pay for 100 Mbps service if that’s all you need. When activity picks up, you can easily increase the bandwidth with a phone call or even online portal. Your service bandwidth will change, as will your monthly bill.

Wavelength Fiber Service
While in-house fiber optic networks might use a single laser beam to transmit data, outside carriers that run large networks use a combination of multiple strands of fiber within a single bundle and multiple wavelengths within each strand. This is a more efficient use of expensive fiber cabling and the only real way to accommodate all the traffic on the regional, national or international network.

The process of using multiple lasers, each tuned to a different frequency or wavelength is called multiplexing. All the beams exist at the same time but since they are different colors, they don’t interfere. You can imagine it something like a rainbow, although the frequencies tend to be in the infrared rather than visible band. Each separate wavelength, also called a lambda, can act like an independent fiber optic strand, although virtually. The physical strand carries them all.

There may be dozens or hundreds of different wavelengths on the same fiber strand depending on whether Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) is used. Each of these wavelengths can carry lit fiber optic service or it can be leased to one customer.

When you order a wavelength, you do so because you need high bandwidth such as 10 Gbps. You also want the ability to use whatever protocol you like or multiple protocols over the same wavelength using your own multiplexing. You’ll typically provide the termination equipment that determines all this, although you might be able to lease it from the service provider. Another advantage of wavelength service is that security is improved because only your traffic uses that particular wavelength and there is no sharing of traffic between wavelengths.

Dark Fiber Service
The ultimate in control comes from having your own fiber optic network or the next best thing, a private fiber strand on your service provider’s network. This private strand is called dark fiber.

Most every Wide Area Network contains unlit fiber strands that are intended for future service expansion as traffic levels increase. It is very expensive to install fiber in trenches or on poles over long distances. The incremental cost of have more strands in the fiber bundle is usually well worth the extra expense compared to having to add more fiber cable later. Some cables have 100 or more fiber strands.

Many fiber network carriers are quite willing to lease out some of these unlit strands as long as there is plenty of capacity left for them to expand. The advantage to you is that dark fiber gives you control of the amount of bandwidth you send down the fiber, the protocols you use, and the best security you can have over long distances unless you install your own fiber cable from point to point. Once again, you provide the termination equipment at each end of the fiber run. In some cases, you can lease this from the service provider.

So, which type of fiber optic service is right for your business? Most of the time regular lit fiber bandwidth will get the job done. In special cases, wavelength service or dark fiber may be the solution. Compare options and see how much bandwidth is readily available at affordable prices for your business location.

Dark Fiber Gives You Control

By: John Shepler

Higher and higher bandwidths are expected in business IT infrastructure. That includes the local networks and leased lines for metro and wide area bandwidth. It’s about more than that, though. Just as important are parameters such as latency, packet loss and jitter. Security is a major concern for all network operations. Finally, the ability to make changes, create workarounds and rapidly bring resources online are important to keeping network operations running smoothly.

Big Bandwidth Means Big Pipes
The need for increasing bandwidth has resulted in a mass migration from copper wirelines to fiber optic cables. Copper may still make sense to the desktop, but outside network connections need the capacity of fiber.

Fiber leased lines are available from 10 Mbps to at least 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps service becoming more readily available. They can be configured as point to point dedicated lines or dedicated Internet access. Many companies need some combination of the two. The Internet is essential to communicating with customers and suppliers. Direct lines to cloud service providers and between company facilities provide more consistent performance, lower latency and higher security.

Wavelengths are Like a Private Fiber Link
Fiber optic cables are said to have unlimited bandwidth. While that might seem like an exaggeration, in practice it is pretty hard to run out of bandwidth. Each cable has multiple fibers, sometimes as many as 100 in a bundle. Each of those fibers can carry multiple streams of non-interfering data through a process of wavelength division multiplexing.

There are two schemes. Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing can divide the fiber into a dozen or more laser colors called Lambdas, all traveling the same time. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing ups that count to 80, 96 or more separate wavelengths using more sophisticated equipment.

Note that each wavelength acts like its own fiber. It is unaware of other wavelengths on the same strand. When you lease a wavelength your data is not multiplexed with anyone else’s. You have exclusive use of all the bandwidth on that wavelength, which might be as high as 10 Gbps. Need more bandwidth? Lease another wavelength. Until the fiber bundle is fully loaded, you’ll never have to run more cable.

Dark Fiber Gives You Ultimate Control
What’s better than a wavelength? Having the entire fiber to yourself. That sounds great until you think about the cost of running your own fiber. It makes total sense on your own property, but what about connections across town or across the country? Unless you are in the business of providing carrier services, you’ll find trenching your own fiber to be cost prohibitive.

There is a way to get pretty much your own fiber. Lease an unused strand from a service provider. That’s more doable than you might think. Remember that it doesn’t make sense to go to all the trouble of burying a single fiber strand when you can bury a multi strand cable or even multiple multi strand cables for not much more cost. That way, a carrier only has to lay in the fiber once and have capacity to spare for decades.

These unused strands are called “dark” fiber because there is no laser light illuminating them. It could be your job to light the fiber. The carrier will simply give you access at each end of the fiber and the rest is up to you.

Clearly this beyond the capability of smaller companies, but they are likely well served by lit fiber options already available. Larger and more sophisticated IT organizations may be able to make good use of dark fiber for research labs, medical campuses, video content creation and transport, engineering & manufacturing, and other demanding applications.

Benefits of Dark Fiber
Owning exclusive rights to use an entire fiber is the next best thing to building your own. You do need to provide the termination equipment at each end and manage those resources. That may include your own DWDM equipment to generate multiple wavelengths for all the bandwidth you can reasonably use.

Without competing customers, there is no need for multiplexers to add and drop connections along the route. The fiber serves your locations only. The lack of unnecessary equipment in the line minimizes latency. Unlike the Internet there is no need for routers every so often to direct traffic. You not only have minimal latency, there is no reason it should vary from common carrier routing decisions, and no congestion as long as you are not overloading the capacity of the fiber or individual wavelength.

Security is another big benefit of dark fiber. There is no sharing of bandwidth among customers. This is similar to the old “nailed up” copper private point to point line. You need to trust the operator of the fiber, but don’t have to worry about the other customers. Of course, encryption on top of dedicated fiber gives you the most security you’ll get in point to point transmission.

Dark Fiber Availability
As fiber is being extensively deployed for Internet, cable television, and cellular towers, dark fiber is also becoming more and more available. Competitive fiber network operators and some cable system operators have lots and lots of extra capacity installed. They are more than happy to lease out unused strands when there are dozens sitting dark.

Do your needs demand the capacity, flexibility, and security that dark fiber offers? Find out what dark fiber options are available for your business locations.

Dark Wavelength vs Dark Fiber for 10 GigE

By: John Shepler

Organizations that require extremely high MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) bandwidth or need to run a multitude of protocols have looked to dark fiber as a technical solution. Dark fiber is still a good choice for the most demanding applications, but there is a competitive service you should also be aware of. It’s called dark wavelength or dark lambda. Let’s look at what each has to offer and how they compare with the more common point to point and MPLS network connections.

What is a Dark Wavelength?
We think of wavelengths as colors of light, not something dark. A wavelength with no color would essentially be turned “off” and would be the same as a dark fiber, right?

Not really. The difference is that dark fiber is nothing but the glass fiber strand itself. There is no equipment attached. Somebody, and that somebody is likely you, has to install terminal equipment at each end and turn on one or more laser beams to “light” the fiber. Sometimes "managed" dark fiber is available, where the carrier will provide the terminal equipment but you'll still have exclusive use of the fiber strand.

With a dark wavelength, this has already been done. It’s not a fiber with a single color laser at one end and a detector at the other. Instead, the equipment that has been installed is DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing gear. What DWDM does is send multiple non-interfering laser beams down the same fiber strand to create what amount to additional channels equivalent to multiplying the number of fiber strands available.

With DWDM there is still only a single physical glass strand. The multiplexing or creating of multiple virtual fibers out of one is based on the fact that glass is transparent to more than a single color or wavelength of light. You can easily see this with a common prism. Shine white light in one side and bands of color appear on the other side. The prism shows that a number of separate colors can travel through the glass without interfering or canceling each other out.

Say you want to create a dozen different wavelengths on a single fiber. You’ll need a DWDM system that contains a dozen laser transmitters, each tuned to a slightly different wavelength or color. In practice, all the colors are in the infrared part of the spectrum and not visible colors. Nonetheless, they are referred to as colors, wavelengths or lambdas (the Greek letter used to denote wavelength).

Why go to all this trouble and expense? Simple: To multiply the capacity of a fiber cable. There are two ways to get more bandwidth from a fiber bundle. Either add more strands or use more of the inherent capacity of each strand. Adding strands means running an additional cable along the same route or replacing the cable you have with a larger diameter one that has more of the hair-thin glass fibers. Both options are incredibly expensive. Getting more from the infrastructure you already have is very attractive by comparison.

This is why DWDM is so popular. Why pull many miles of new cable at a cost of millions of dollars when you can upgrade your terminal equipment for a fraction of the cost? DWDM is a well established and standardized technology. Why not let technology save you the cost and delays involved in upgrading the physical cable?

The Dark Wavelength vs Dark Fiber Tradeoff
If you lease a dark fiber strand, you have exclusive use of that piece of glass. You have the security of knowing that only your traffic will travel over that strand. There will be other customers using other fiber strands, but there is a physical separation between you and them.

Dark fiber also gives you the flexibility of using any protocol you want and even setting up multiple protocols on the same fiber. How do you do that? By installing DWDM equipment of your own to create multiple independent wavelengths.

You can see how this can get to be expensive fast. A simple one wavelength fiber strand is one thing. You can probably get 10 Gbps bandwidth on that strand with simple equipment. DWDM is another matter. Now you need a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment at each end that you have to install, pay for and manage. For that, you can create multiple independent channels of, say, 10 Gbps each.

Instead, why not let somebody else bear that expense? That’s the basis of dark wavelength services. Someone, the carrier or service provider, has already lit the fiber with DWDM equipment that they own and operate. However, they don’t need all of the wavelength capacity themselves. If there is only enough traffic to use half the wavelengths available, the others can be leased to help pay for the system.

A dark wavelength is simply an unused wavelength on an existing fiber optic system. To be truly dark, the laser for that wavelength may be turned off or there is no card in the system for that particular channel. Either way, once someone agrees to lease the wavelength, service can be turned up fairly quickly. After all, the fiber and the DWDM chassis are already in place and operating.

Why Choose Dark Wavelength?
One reason to opt for dark wavelength service is that it may be all that is available. The owner of the fiber network may not be willing to lease an entire strand. That’s especially true if they have already lit their strands and are using some of the wavelengths.

Another attraction of dark wavelengths is equipment cost and maintenance. In theory, a provider could require you to purchase the channel cards that are compatible with their DWDM system and light the wavelength yourself. More likely, they will handle that themselves. You may or may not be asked to pay a one-time installation fee that includes the cost of the wavelength cards.

If the common carrier turns up the wavelength and maintains the system, you will have exclusive use of that particular wavelength at a bandwidth of 1, 5 or 10 Gbps. Sometimes wavelengths can be aggregated to create higher bandwidths up to 100 Gbps. Either way, only your traffic will be carried on that wavelength as whatever protocol you choose. Other customers will have their traffic on other wavelengths, but the different color beams will not interact.

Other Options
Not everyone needs or wants dark fiber or wavelength service. Many businesses only need 100 Mbps or Gigabit service. Both traditional SONET or the newer Carrier Ethernet protocols are generally available as point to point connections, ports to much larger MPLS optical networks, or Dedicated Internet Access.

What bandwidth option is best for your applications? Why not discuss your needs and get competitive quotes from multiple carriers for a range of services that can meet your needs. Then you can compare costs and benefits and pick the high bandwidth fiber optic service that best meeds your requirements.


Note: Spectrum of light wavelengths though a prism animation courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

Ethernet over Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (EoDWDM)

Organizations with very high bandwidth requirements, such as financial institutions, content delivery networks, video production houses, research labs, hospital groups, data centers, may need more performance than standard telecom line services can provide. One approach is to build-out a custom fiber network by installing your own fiber or leasing dark fiber strands. Another is to lease wavelengths on already lit fiber.

Your Own Fiber
Installing your own fiber on campus makes a lot of sense, since you control the property as well as the networking assets. Once you leave your premises, however, fiber construction gets very expensive very fast… even if you can obtain the necessary right-of-way permissions.

Using Dark Fiber
This is where dark fiber has found a niche. What is dark fiber? It is simply fiber optic cable that has been installed in the ground or on utility poles but never activated or “lit.” The cable may have been put in place in anticipation of future needs. Often, some strands in the cable are already in use, but there are other fiber pairs still dark.

Dark fiber has the advantage of already being in place and giving you the most flexibility in what you want to do with it. However, dark fiber assets aren’t always available where you want to go. You also have the responsibility of supplying the maintaining the terminal equipment that powers the fiber. This may be more costly that many organizations can afford and, perhaps, unnecessary.

Using Lit Fiber
The opposite of dark fiber is lit fiber. The fiber is not only installed, but the terminal equipment has been put in place and is operational. This is most often done by service providers who offer bandwidth to companies and other organizations that can use it and are located in the “service footprint” of the carrier.

Lit fiber is now popular for private connections and dedicated Internet access from 10 Mbps on up to OC-48 (2.4 Gbps) and Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps). A given carrier may offer either SONET, Ethernet or both protocols. All size organizations are moving from copper to fiber bandwidth services as fiber becomes more available and costs decline.

What if you need more bandwidth, higher security or more flexibility in protocols? Are you back to leasing dark fiber or installing your own?

Advantages of Wavelength Services
There’s an intermediate step that is perhaps the perfect solution to many demanding needs. This is wavelength services. While fiber cables have multiple glass strands or fibers, each fiber strand can also be divided into multiple colors or wavelengths. This is done by shining a few to dozens of different frequency laser beams down the glass fiber. Since each beam has its own wavelength, it operates independently of the other beams. It’s like fibers within fibers.

DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology can provide over 100 different wavelengths per fiber pair. This makes it very cost effective to transport private line connections for many users on a fiber network. It’s quite practical to lease one or more wavelengths for your high bandwidth applications.

Ethernet on Wavelength Services
Ethernet over DWDM or EoDWDM is a way of extending your high performance local network across town or around the country. It’s an Ethernet connection that’s available in bandwidths from 1 Gbps up to 100 Gbps and readily scaled up and down as needed. Popular service levels are 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps, 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps.

This is dedicated service because no one but you is using a particular wavelength. You have all the bandwidth to yourself with the security of not having other users data streams multiplexed on your circuit.

With wavelength services, such as EoDWDM, the burden of running the network is left to the service provider. Wavelengths are often called managed wavelength services because the service provider maintains the fiber, terminal equipment & repeaters plus monitors operation 24/7. You simply connect at each end. You can opt for protected service that switches to a new wavelength or fiber if the circuit fails and even diverse routes so that no one disaster is likely to knock out service completely.

Do you find yourself in an increasing bandwidth situation and wanting to consider all the options available for your particular locations? If so, get fiber optic network services and pricing, plus recommendations from expert consultants.

The How and Why of 10 Gbps WAN Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Big data keeps getting bigger. HD video will soon be supplanted by 4K and then 8K video. IT data centers are going dark, one by one, as applications move to the cloud. Where is the bandwidth coming from to handle the demand of ever higher bit rates in the MAN and WAN?

That bandwidth is coming from fiber optic carriers who realize that every organization is going to be upsizing its data pipes or falling behind competitively. A gigabit per second was considered massive bandwidth not that many years ago. Now it’s considered entry level for many medium size and larger companies. Even consumers are anxiously awaiting universal FTTH to satisfy their ever growing media demands. Is 10 Gbps unreasonable for high performance business applications? Not at all.

The next question is how do you go about acquiring 10 Gig bandwidth once you’ve made the determination that nothing less will get the job done. Here’s an overview of the 10 Gigabit Bandwidth Options available for businesses and other organizations.


Note that SONET at the OC-192 level is still a viable option for businesses seeking 10 Gbps bandwidth. It will continue to be a good choice for some time to come because the amount of installed base of SONET/SDH fiber.

However, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is coming on strong and should be looked at carefully as the service of the future. Carrier Ethernet-native networks and those running Ethernet over SONET have big advantages in scalability and ease of deployment compared to the rather rigidly defined SONET OC levels.

The trick is to get a service port installed that is capable of providing the maximum bandwidth you’ll need. If you are considering more than 1 Gbps service, then a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port makes a lot of sense. It will allow you to incrementally scale your service bandwidth from 1 to 10 Gbps without having new terminal equipment installed. The terminal equipment is most likely to be a managed router installed by the carrier as CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).

What if you are going for the whole 10 GigE right from the start? That would merit a discussion on the cost tradeoff (if any) to have a 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps port installed right away. As outrageous as it may seem from the traditional perspective, 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet are real service options available today for many business locations. These are likely to become common bandwidth levels as more sophisticated applications move to the cloud.

Does it make sense to opt for wavelengths or dark fiber? It depends on what you’ll be using it for. If you need to be running multiple protocols through a point to point connection, managed wavelength service can be the right move. If you are sophisticated enough to install and maintain your own DWDM equipment, then you might get the best deal by simply leasing dark fiber to the locations you want to connect. For most businesses, though, dark fiber is beyond what they really need.

How can you tell what the best option is when there are multiple choices available? Make sure you are getting competitive quotes for as many different options and carriers as possible. It’s likely that there may at least several serving your location that you may be completely unaware of. You best choice is to work with a bandwidth broker, like Telarus, Inc., to get the best deal on 10 Gigabit or other bandwidth service.

How You Can Benefit From Wavelength Services

By: John Shepler

What do you do when you have a need for high bandwidth, security and flexibility in your WAN connections? This may be the time to take a closer look at wavelength services.


What tradeoffs should you do to ensure that you’re getting the right bandwidth for your operation? Certainly, there is the protocol competition between the dedicated point to point line services provided by SONET/SDH and Ethernet over Fiber. Both will get your packets from point A to point B, but you may find that locations lit for EoF have access to much higher bandwidths for the same lease price or a cost savings if you don’t need a BW upgrade.

One important consideration is the protocol that you wish to transport. Ethernet is easiest to connect and most efficient over Ethernet WAN services. SONET/SDH is designed for TDM, but can also support packet switched networks. The waters have been muddied lately by the addition of Ethernet over SONET that gives you Ethernet services running on mature SONET fiber optic networks.

Another tradeoff worth doing is lit fiber vs dark fiber. Wavelengths are a lit fiber service. They are fully managed in the sense that the carrier provides the fiber path plus the terminal equipment that accepts and delivers your traffic. You don’t need to be concerned about the inner workings of the network because the carrier takes care of that for you.

The big advantages of dark fiber are improved security, since you are providing the terminal equipment at each end of the fiber, and the ability to create your own wavelengths. You’ll need to invest in the CWDM (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing) or DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) equipment. By doing that, you can have as many wavelengths as you wish, each running a different protocol. You can even multiplex wavelengths to create higher bandwidth pipes.

What is the right connectivity solution for your needs? Get expert recommendations on fiber optic wavelength services now.

Finding Lit Buildings and Near Net Fiber Buildings

By: John Shepler

Fiber optic bandwidth service is becoming a staple of modern business. Yet, not everyone has it. Some businesses are just too small to make good use of the 10 Mbps+ bandwidth available over fiber and are happy to stick with T1 lines or lower speed Ethernet over Copper service. Some businesses remember the high prices they encountered when they last checked fiber service pricing and don’t know how much more affordable it is now. Many others could easily get fiber but don’t know that it is already in their building or right next door.

Fiber optic bandwidth isn’t the esoteric product it used to be. Now even consumers are demanding fiber to the premises (FTTP) to support high definition television and on-demand video. Businesses moving to the cloud are finding that the old connectivity doesn’t cut it anymore. Only fiber has the capacity combined with low latency, jitter and packet loss to give you efficient connections with your cloud services. If you are in the video production or distribution business or need to transport large volumes of medical images, then fiber is pretty much a given.

So, how do you go about getting fiber optic service for your business without breaking the bank? You start by finding out what’s readily available to you. If the building you are in already has one or more fiber optic lines pulled-in and connected then it is said to be “lit.” A lit building almost guarantees that you’ll be able to order fiber optic service. The hard work has already been done. What costs a bundle is the construction required to run the fiber optic cable from the carrier’s closest point of presence overhead or underground to your facility and hook up the termination equipment in the telecom room.

Unlike twisted copper pair, even a single optical fiber has tremendous capacity. Right now 10 Gbps is typical, although that can be multiplied using multiple lasers transmitting at different frequencies or wavelengths down the same fiber. This is called DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. If you like, you can generally lease an entire wavelength yourself. It’s an optical private line. You own the total capacity to use as you wish.

Most often, you’ll want a lower level service standardized under SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) or Ethernet over Fiber (EoF). These services can give you a fraction of the total capacity of the fiber at a small fraction of the cost. Bandwidth can be cost effective at as little as 10 Mbps for EoF and can easily be scaled up to 100 or even 1,000 Mbps and up to 10 Gbps.

One thing to know about lit buildings is that generally they are lit by just one carrier. That carrier will provide service to everyone in the building. You need to find out who that is and what services they have to offer.

What if no carrier has lit your building yet? Surprisingly, that’s still true for the majority of business buildings, even at this late date. In that case you want to know who has lit buildings closest to yours. Why? It’s because the cost of constructing fiber is a function of distance. It’s a lot cheaper if you only have to connect next door than if you have to reach down the block. It’s much less expensive than if the closest fiber is a mile or more away.

If your building is lit, then it is considered to be on network or “on-net”. If you are not receiving service, then you are “off-net.” As you can imagine, there is a clear price difference between facilities that are on and off-net. If you are off-net but close to a building that is on-net, then you are considered to be “near-net.” This is a good position to be in because it is generally very practical to get new fiber optic service into near-net buildings.

This all makes sense, but how do you know if you are on, off or near a fiber network and which carrier or carriers are involved? That’s a daunting task to do as an individual if all you have is a telephone and a copy of the Yellow Pages. Even a web search will give you some possible carriers, but not all of them, and it won’t tell you anything about your network status. Fortunately, there is a specialized search tool that specifically locates fiber optic services for any given location.

This is the patented Telarus GeoQuote software that you can access for free. You simply enter your business address and the system will search its database to provide you a map and list of nearby fiber optic locations. It’s all automated and can be accessed from any web browser anytime, day or night. There’s no obligation, but you do have the option of having a telecom brokerage consultant give you the latest competitive pricing for options that apply to your location. The one limitation is that this service only works for business addresses and is not for residential users.

Are you ready for a pleasant surprise? Go ahead and check your business location for available fiber optic services. Even if you’ve done some research on your own lately, you may well find options that you didn’t even know were available.

Next Stop 100 Gbps WAN Bandwidth

Big data, cloud computing and HD video are pushing the limits of what we once considered high bandwidth private line and MPLS network connections. Gigabit Ethernet is now popular with companies that have high bandwidth demands. Some firms are moving to 10 GigE, as 1000 Mbps is no longer adequate. If 10 Gigabits per second is also a limiting factor for your business, the time has come to consider 100 Gbps bandwidth.

Most of the larger fiber optic carriers have been busy upgrading their core networks to 100 Gbps. They need this kind of backbone bandwidth to avoid having to install new fiber to meet demand. Few, however, have offered this capacity to their customers.

Zayo is changing the game. They are now offering 100 Gbps as a wavelength service between major cities. The 100 Gbps connections are located in key traffic aggregation points and IP nodes throughout the U.S. This makes the service especially attractive to content producers and large ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who have inherently high bandwidth demands.

Why choose wavelength service versus SONET or Ethernet transport? High bandwidth options is one reason. Another is the ability to specify protocols and security measures. Leasing a wavelength is the next best thing to leasing an entire fiber strand or deploying your own fiber optic cabling. Unless you are in the business of operating a regional or national fiber optic network, the cost of creating all this infrastructure is prohibitive. However, leasing a wavelength may well be within reason.

Wavelength services are created by a process called WDM or Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The idea is that each fiber strand can support much higher bandwidths if fed by multiple lasers instead of just one. Each laser is tuned to operate on a particular frequency or wavelength according to a standard international grid plan. The wavelengths all shine through the fiber simultaneously, but they do not interact. You can think of each wavelength as a separate fiber for most purposes.

How much bandwidth can a wavelength carry? By using simple on-off keying of the beam, a wavelength can transport up to 10 Gbps. For 100 Gbps you would have to combine or aggregate multiple beams or use a more advanced modulation scheme such as CP-DQPSK (Coherent Polarization-Multiplex Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Key) to transmit multiple bits per symbol. With a plug-in card such as the CIsco CRS 1-Port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Coherent DWDM Interface Module, a single wavelength can now transport 100 Gbps. There is standards work underway to extend that to 400 Gbps and eventually 1 Tbps.

Zayo offers wavelength services at 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps, 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps. Diversity and sub-50 msec protection switching is available to improve reliability to carrier standards.you can order single or multiple waves as needed to support your applications. Zayo has the ability to scale bandwidth capacity along their routes to 8 Tbps when such a need arises.

Companies interested in high bandwidth wavelength services are also often interested in low latency. Zayo offers low latency routs with up to 100 Gbps of bandwidth between Seattle, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia to key data centers and financial and enterprise locations. Their low latency routes also include a hop to London as well.

Zayo will continue to deploy their 100G wavelength service across major markets for through the first half of 2013. Their entire network includes 67,000 route miles serving 45 states and Washington D.C. with 10,530 on-net buildings that include 535 data centers, 515 carrier PoPs (points of presence) and 2,743 cell towers. They also offer colocation facilities with over 141,000 square feet under management.

Does your company need higher levels of bandwidth to maintain or improve productivity or support demanding applications? If so, there are fiber optic service options available for 100 Mbps up to 100 Gbps at attractive prices. Competitive quotes are available at no charge.

Eastern Tennessee Gets Lit for Business Fiber Optic Service

It is well known that Nashville, Tennessee is a major hub for many fiber optic network providers. As a major center for commerce in the South, there are many health care, publishing banking, transportation and, of course, music companies that need the high bandwidth you can only get with fiber optic connections. This need is becoming more and more important beyond Nashville, throughout the entire state of Tennessee.

This is why EarthLink, a major bandwidth service provider, has recently completed a major buildout of fiber assets that cover Eastern TN cities. It includes a 343 mile fiber route from Nashville to Knoxville, a diverse fiber route from Knoxville to Chattanooga and another fiber route from Knoxville to Bristol. There are network interconnection points in Cookeville, Oak Ridge, Cleveland, Sweetwater and Morristown. Major POPs are located in Knoxville, Morristown, Johnson City and Bristol.

EarthLink’s Points of Presence (PoPs) on the Eastern Tennessee Middle Mile Broadband Project can deliver up to 10 Gbps DWDM optical services. DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing is a technique used to multiply the bandwidth capacity of fiber optic links. Instead of using a single laser beam to carry the traffic, DWDM uses dozens or more lasers of different colors (wavelengths) to create independent high bandwidth carriers through the fiber strand. Each wavelength is an independent channel and does not interact with the other wavelengths on the strand. It’s like multiplying your fiber optic cable by 10x to 100x the capacity.

In addition to providing high bandwidth connections directly to businesses and universities, EarthLink has the capacity to offer fiber optic services up to 10 Gbps on a wholesale basis to Internet service providers (ISPs) that serve smaller businesses and consumers, especially in smaller communities. One of the big stumbling blocks to expanding rural broadband has been the lack of what’s called “middle mile” infrastructure. It is this middle mile backbone that EarthLink has deployed. Other ISPs connect to the backbone and then provide “last mile” connections directly to users. Some ISPs do this wirelessly and are known as WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers.

EarthLink headquarters are located in Atlanta, GA. More than a regional carrier, EarthLink owns and operates 28,000 route miles of fiber, 90 metro fiber rings and 4 data centers to serve nearly all of the United States. Business connectivity services include MPLS networks, Internet access, data T1 and bonded T1 lines, full and fractional DS3, SONET full and fractional bandwidth at OC-3 (155 Mbps) OC-12 (611 Mbps) and OC-48 levels (2.5 Gbps), metro fiber Ethernet and SIP trunking. In addition, EarthLink provides other network services, such as managed security, hosted PBX, colocation and cloud hosting.

What’s driving the need for all this fiber optic bandwidth? Business technology has changed rapidly over the last decade or so. Small and well as large companies now find their business processes IT driven. The benefits have been wider communication, faster agility and higher productivity. Some industries, like video production and delivery, are inherently high bandwidth in nature. They can’t function without fiber level bandwidth. Many others are finding that the large cost savings they can realize by moving to the cloud comes with a new requirement. Where once lower speed wireline services could handle communications in and out of the company, the cloud makes all servers remote and requires fiber speeds to prevent productivity killing latencies.

How about your company? If you are located in Eastern Tennessee or anywhere else in the country, there are new fiber assets available at better prices than ever before. Get competitive quotes on fiber optic services for business to support your demanding needs.



Note: Tennessee map courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Dark Fiber Services to 400 Gbps

It’s clear that bandwidth demands are on the rise. Even the smallest companies are swapping out their 1.5 Mbps T1 lines for 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. Medium size companies are increasingly moving up to 50 or 100 Mbps connections. Large companies are climbing the Gigabit ladder higher and higher.

Usually we expect available bandwidth to top out at 5 or 10 Gbps. Sometimes carriers can support 40 Gbps on their networks while they move up to 100 Gbps themselves. Now, one competitive carrier is setting a new benchmark at 400 Gbps.

Integra Telecom is one of the country’s leading providers of fiber optic networking solutions. They own and operate a long-haul fiber network that stretches for 5,000 route miles. This is expanded by 3,000 miles of metropolitan fiber connecting more than 2,200 enterprise buildings and data centers.

This describes only the lit and operational fiber assets provided by Integra. Among their 160,000 miles of fiber assets are dark fiber pairs just waiting to be pressed into service. If your requirements go beyond the usual WAN requirements, dark fiber may be the answer to your high bandwidth needs.

What is dark fiber? It is essentially fiber optic strands in a fiber bundle that are not in use. Fiber itself is cheap compared to the cost of burying it in the ground. That’s why anyone installing fiber cables over any distance makes sure that there are many, many extra fiber strands beyond those they expect to use. If you install too small a cable and see your traffic grow in the future, it gets very expensive to duplicate your network by installing more fiber. Since fiber strands are about the size of thick hairs, why not install a cable that has 100 or more pair even if you are planning to light only a dozen?

Integra has lots of fiber beyond their immediate or expected needs. Rather than let all of that unused capacity sit idle, they are offering it to large enterprises, healthcare organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions that can put it to good use. Their options include bundles, lease and Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) that offer complete fiber pairs dedicated to your exclusive use.

Why would you choose to use dark fiber instead of other bandwidth services? Bandwidth is certainly a driver. A single pair of dark fiber supports up to 400 Gbps of lit transport. A pair is used to provide protection against failure in a single fiber or the equipment it connects.

How is it possible to get this much bandwidth from one fiber pair? It has to do with how you transmit your data. The glass fiber itself has nearly unlimited bandwidth, at least for any applications we can envision now. The inefficient way to transport data is to feed one end of the fiber with a laser of a certain color and modulate that beam with your data. Sure, you could get 5 Gbps or more using this technique. You certainly won’t get 400 Gbps. For that massive capacity you need to use the fiber more efficiently.

Right now, the go-to technology for increasing fiber capacity is called DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Instead of sending one beam down the fiber core, you send dozens or even a hundred or more beams simultaneously. Each is a different wavelength or color called a Lambda. You split up your data stream at the sending end and recombine it at the receiving end.

Of course, you can treat each wavelength as a separate and individual transmission path. This is most often how DWDM systems are set up. Each channel is a high bandwidth communications link completely independent of the others. There is no requirement that the channels use the same protocol or run at the same speed.

Another big advantage of dark fiber is network security. You and you alone have use of the fiber strands. There are no other customer’s signals multiplexed with yours as they generally are on the usual data services. This can be especially advantageous for companies with very high security requirements, such as banks and governmental agencies.

You should also know that there is another step between fiber optic bandwidth services and dark fiber. This involves leasing a complete wavelength on a lit fiber link. You have the security of being the only traffic on that wavelength and avoid the cost of buying and operating your own terminal equipment.

Are your bandwidth needs well beyond the services that are being offered commercially? Dark fiber pairs may be the solution to your demanding requirements. It’s readily available in many business locations.



Note: Picture of glowing fiber optic strands courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Zayo Lights Denver With Expanded Fiber Optic Network Services

Zayo Group, a major provider of fiber optic bandwidth infrastructure, has metro fiber networks in the Denver and Colorado Springs metropolitan business districts. Now they are expanding their fiber assets to span the entire Front Range of Colorado that includes the Denver metro area plus Colorado Springs, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland, Greeley and Fort Collins. For Colorado based businesses, this means another 521 miles of fiber to support research and development, technology, education and energy, among other major users. That will bring Zayo up to 900 route miles of fiber optic networking in the Denver area.

What sort of fiber optic services are available to businesses in the Denver area? Pretty much everything you can use from metro connections to Internet access, right on up to wavelength services and dark fiber.

Zayo can offer you classic TDM and SONET based services from DS3 (45 Mbps) right on up to OC-192 (10 Gbps). You can get these configured as point to point private lines, hub/tail arrangements and dedicated ring configurations. There are options for both logical and physical protection with fast failover.

Zayo is also set up to offer you the newer Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) services with speeds that range from 100 Mbps (Fast Ethernet) up to 10 Gbps (10 GigE). These are also available as point to point private lines, but go on to include point to multipoint configurations. These Ethernet services include end to end QoS (Quality of Service) options to prioritize voice, video and private data network traffic. This gives you the ability to converge your network for cost savings and higher productivity.

Does your company need Dedicated Internet Access (DIA)? Who doesn’t? Zayo offers line speeds ranging from 10 Mbps on the low end on up to 1 Gbps. This runs on a fully redundant MPLS network with Service Level Agreements (SLA) available from 99.9% to 99.99% uptime. Choose from Scalable GigE and 10GigE interface options. You also have the ability to connect end to end on Zayo’s nationwide network.

If standard fiber optic line services aren’t quite enough to meet your needs, you can opt for wavelength services over Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM). Options include 1, 2.5, or 10 Gbps in single or multiple waves. Choose a dedicated point to point data transport solution with defined or undefined routes, single path or dual path, or flexible topologies.

For the ultimate in bandwidth and security options, Zayo can provide you with dark fiber. Since you are leasing entire fiber strands exclusively, you have complete control of the traffic on your piece of the fiber network. This offers stronger security that you can achieve with shared networks. It also gives you complete protocol flexibility and rapid scaling for speeds up to 400 Gbps.

While this particular buildout covers the Denver, Colorado area, Zayo Group provides both nationwide and international connectivity with over 61,000 route miles of fiber, 9,000 buildings and 2,400 cell towers on-net, and 136,000 square feet of colocation space. Their network covers 45 states plus Washington, DC, as well as London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Toronto and Tokyo.

Do you have connectivity needs in Denver or other metropolitan areas that require fiber optic speeds? If so, you should know that there are more options available at lower prices than ever before. Get competitive quotes for fiber optic services that meet your business requirements from Zayo and other high performance service providers.


Note: Photo of Denver skyscrapers courtesy of Sasha Bruck on Wikimedia Commons.

Dark Fiber for Bandwidth and Security

The step up from copper-based bandwidth solutions to fiber optic connections is an important and necessary move for many companies. For others, it’s just not enough. Where do you go when the best service options on fiber optic lines don’t have the bandwidth or security features that you require? Dark fiber steps in where lit fiber falls short.

How can lit fiber service fall short of the mark? After all, It’s possible to get as much as 10,000 Mbps or 10 Gigabit SONET or Ethernet delivered to your door. In some cases, you can push this to OC-768 or 40 Gbps. The carriers themselves are upgrading their backbone networks to 100 Gbps.

All true, but some companies still have a need for more bandwidth, more control and more security. You get those things when you control the fiber itself rather than a service that runs on the fiber and is available to any paying customer.

What you may be looking for is called dark fiber. It’s dark because it hasn’t been “lit” with laser light yet. This is fiber that has been installed in the ground or on poles overhead but not pressed into service. There was a enormous fiber buildout in the late 1990’s that led to a fiber glut less than a decade later. The fiber was installed in anticipation of a major boom in Internet services that went flat when the tech bubble burst at the turn of the century.

Some of that fiber is still available for lease. Most, though, has been acquired and now more dark fiber is being installed. This time there looks to be no end to the demand for business bandwidth. Big data, health care automation, a move from local data centers to the cloud, and other advances are changing the landscape for business. There really isn’t any going back to the days of paper filled file cabinets or even software packages running on local PCs. We’re becoming more and more interconnected and both the size of data files and the necessary speeds of transmissions are increasing.

Carriers, financial institutions, research labs, video production companies and others who generate massive traffic may be interested in leasing dark fiber to connect two or more locations within a metro district or between cities. A number of large network operators have dark fiber assets for lease, including Zayo with fiber in the ground in many cities.

On campus, you might think about trenching your own fiber optic cable. Beyond that, you need to lease fiber from a company that is in the business of installing fiber over long distances. They invest by burying multiple cables with multiple fiber strands along the routes where they have permission to dig. You’ll probably be leasing one or two strands out of a hundred or more within the cable. Those will be your strands for the duration of the lease. You’ll need to install the equipment at both ends of the fiber run to transport your data.

The way to transport really massive amounts of data from point to point is to use Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) to send multiple laser beams at slight different wavelengths or colors through the fiber. Each beam is independent and transports anywhere from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps. DWDM might generate 100 or more separate wavelengths. Each wavelength can transport any protocol you desire independently of what any other wavelengths are doing.

Dark fiber security comes from the fact that you control the entire fiber strand. Only your equipment is connected to it. That gives any potential intruders no access points to tap into your data streams. If you need even more guarantees of security, you can always choose to encrypt your packets while they are traversing the fiber.

You don’t have to go all the way from SONET or Ethernet over Fiber to Dark Fiber. You can simply lease one or more wavelengths or go with a managed fiber solution where the fiber provider also installs and operates the termination equipment at each end. They are essentially expertly managing your fiber for you for a fee.

Do you have requirements beyond what common bandwidth solutions can accommodate? If so, find out what dark fiber assets and managed fiber services are available for the locations you have in mind.



Note: Photo of fiber optic conduit spools courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

All My Access Is In Texas

If the state of Texas is where you do business, you’ll want to be aware of Alpheus Communications and their regional network connecting the major cities in Texas. In addition, they have colocation data center facilities in the Lone Star State. This gives you the advantage of security, reliability and low cost connectivity while keeping everything reasonably nearby.

The Alpheus regional fiber optic network offers high bandwidth and low latency between Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan, Austin, San Antonio, Laredo, McAllen, Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Victoria and Houston. Long haul connections can take your traffic anywhere in North America at bandwidth speeds ranging from DS-1 (1.5 Mbps) up to OC-192 (10 Gbps).

Network connectivity is available in a wide range of options. These include Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Metro Ethernet, Private Line and Managed Wavelength. Alpheus clients can connect with each other through a cross connect arrangement called Metrolocity. You can choose from bandwidth speeds ranging from DS-1 to OC-12 (622 Mbps) and peer with other enterprises and competitive communications service providers. You do not have to colocate or build facilities to other carriers to make these connections. They’re provided by Alpheus as part of their Metrolocity peering.

Alpheus operates four hub facilities in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Their network operations center (NOC) is also located in Houston. The Austin and Houston data centers are SAS 70 Type II Audit Certified to meet the demanding needs of enterprise clients. These data centers give you the security, reliability and scalability you need to host enterprise applications, disaster recover solutions, high performance websites, Software as a Service (SaaS) applications and general IT operations infrastructure. You’ll find hubbed and point to point service from DS-1 to OC-192, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps managed wavelengths.

Some clients find even SONET, GigE and wavelength services too limiting. To meet their needs, Alpheus Communications offers dark fiber solutions. With dark fiber, capacity is determined by the terminal equipment, usually DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing). In essence, you become operator of your own fiber optic network. That means you have the ability to transport any protocol or multiple protocols at once. Leverage wavelengths to create massive bandwidth for transporting near-limitless amounts of information.

Perhaps a Gigabit Ethernet connection is enough to meet your needs. Alpheus is set up to connect you across the metro markets in Texas or across the country. You can choose from point to point or point to multipoint GigE connectivity. Bandwidth options vary from 51 Mbps on up to 1 Gbps if you don’t need the full 1,000 Mbps right away. Rate limiting is flexible. There are three different classes of service available. The highest is load sharing. With this, Alpheus provides two physically diverse unprotected connections and you have two client interfaces. You take care of the protection switching. The other grades are Network Protection, which does have network protection features but no client protection, and completely unprotected service.

Are you interested in Texas Metro Ethernet service? If so, Alpheus can give you layer 2 networking services that include point to point, point to multipoint and any to any WAN connectivity. This connectivity takes place over a redundant MPLS network on a self-healing DWDM fiber backbone. Your port interfaces include 10/100 Mbps FastE, 1000 Mbps GigE and 10 Gbps Ethernet. Alpheus has last mile connectivity solutions that include Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over NxT1 and Ethernet over NxDS3 plus Ethernet over Wireless to get you connected no matter where you happen to be.

Do you need network access in Texas? You’re in luck. Get pricing, features and availability of Texas metro and long haul network connections from Alpheus and other high quality network service providers.



Note: Map of Texas courtesy of WikimediaCommons.

Private Networking With Wavelength Services

There comes a time in the growth of a company when standard telecom services just won’t get it done anymore. This is when the IT department starts contemplating buying or renting dark fiber to get the bandwidth, latency and control they need. There’s another alternative that should be considered, however. That’s managed wavelength services.

What’s a wavelength? It’s one color or lambda on a fiber optic strand. That’s right, fiber optic lines have more than one light beam running through them. Each color represents a different wavelength or frequency of laser light. Because they are different colors, these light beams will mix within the optical fiber strand but one will not interfere with another. It’s like they are completely different pairs of wires in a copper bundle or channels on a cable system.

Why have multiple wavelengths? It’s a matter of efficiency. The cost of the equipment to transmit and receive multiple lambdas is far less than the cost to trench or fly hundreds or thousands of miles of fiber optic cable. Each cable has multiple strands. Each strand has multiple wavelengths. Because of this, each fiber installation has massive bandwidth capability available for commercial use.

The technology that makes wavelengths possible is called DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The “dense” designation means that many wavelengths are loaded onto the fiber with close spacing between them. DWDM terminal equipment must have precise and stable control of the grid of light wavelengths on the fiber. There is an ITU (International Telecommunications Union) standard for this so that equipment is common for the industry. There can be as many as 160 channels or wavelengths, all in the infrared C and L bands, on each fiber strand.

What carriers who own fiber assets are doing is offering entire wavelengths for lease to companies that need high levels of bandwidth. Integra Telecom is a good example of a company offering wavelength services on their metropolitan and long haul fiber optic network. One of the nice features of wavelengths is that you can pick your protocol. Integra offers traditional SONET Interface options of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps. You can also get Ethernet Interface options of 1 GigE and 10 GigE.

What Integra is offering is called managed wavelength services. That differs from dark fiber, where you are responsible for all the terminal equipment on each end of the fiber, or unmanaged wavelengths where the carrier simply feeds a wavelength with the signals and perhaps interface modules that you supply. A managed solution means that Integra is responsible for providing the terminal equipment and monitoring the network 24/7 with surveillance and network alarms from their Network Operations Center (NOC).

What you get is a highly reliable, high bandwidth, low latency point to point optical wavelength service for long haul or metropolitan connections. Integra operates a 5,000 mile high speed long haul network with metro services in many major cities of the Western United States and connections to Chicago, New York City, Ashburn, VA, and Dallas. Within the 35 markets across 11 Western states, they operate a 3,000 mile metro access network that includes more than 1900 fiber-fed buildings. If your business is located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah or Washington, you can benefit from the Integra best-in-class fiber optic network, including wavelength services.

What types of businesses are ideal for wavelength services? Companies needing business continuity and disaster recovery solutions, Ethernet transport and optical storage connectivity or data storage connectivity. If you have more than one data center, chances are you need the “big pipes” that wavelengths can provide.

Can your business do better using wavelengths than what you have now for telecom services? Get competitive quotes for managed wavelength services from Integra and other high performance competitive carriers to see for yourself.



Note: Image of light spectrum from prisms courtesy of Marcellus Wallace on Wikimedia Commons.

New Low Latency Fiber Optic Services For Atlanta

Atlanta, Georgia is a major hub for fiber optic traffic serving the United States and International destinations. It’s also the home of many Fortune 500 companies and thousands of enterprises in need of high performance bandwidth services. AboveNet has recognized a growing need in the Atlanta metro market and is making a major expansion of its low latency fiber optic routes for downtown Atlanta, Alpharetta, Buckhead and Norcross.

AboveNet is a highly competitive carrier that focuses on high bandwidth connectivity. They operate about 2.3 million fiber miles in top US and European markets feeding more than 2,800 optically-enabled commercial buildings. Their major hubs in the SouthEast are Atlanta and Miami, with others in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco / San Jose, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Boston Philadelphia, Baltimore, The New York Metro Area and the Washington DC Corridor. In addition, AboveNet connects to Asia in Tokyo, Japan and to Europe in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris.

These AboveNet hubs are connected by DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) equipment that terminates the fiber runs. Most backbone trunks offer 10 Gbps, with individual city locations providing up to 40 Gbps connectivity for carriers and companies that need this capacity.

AboveNet is making its complete suite of high performance bandwidth services available to businesses in the Atlanta metropolitan area. These include both Metro Area Network (MAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN), plus WDM Wavelength Services, Metro Ethernet, WAN Ethernet and IP Transit.

Few providers can offer wavelength services for MAN users. These include standardized Carrier Ethernet services that have the MEF 9 and MEF 14 certificates. Single wavelength service offers a 40 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps or 1 Gbps wave service to extend your corporate LAN/WAN to multiple metro area locations. Data mirroring can be done with a Fiber Channel, ESCON or FICON wave. Both protected and unprotected options are available.

Metro WDM applications include virtualization and the serverless office, real time transactions backup and high speed business continuity, streaming multimedia, Storage Area Network (SAN), delivering mission critical enterprise data and applications, and e-commerce transactions. There are basic, enhanced and custom wave solutions to meet any business requirement up to 40 Gbps.

WAN services allow you to reach beyond your metro area to connect with other metro locations are around the world. eXpressWave long haul optical transport is a point to point inter-city connection service that supports voice, data and video between more than 78 city pair combinations. Bandwidth options include 1 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps going from POP to POP. Metro connectivity is available in top US and European cities for companies with national and international business locations.

Do you have a business in the Atlanta metro area or other major city in the US that needs very high performance connectivity for metropolitan, national or international business needs? If so, get pricing and features for the fiber optic bandwidth solutions you need from AboveNet and other high performance carriers.




Note: Photo of downtown Atlanta at twilight courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

600 Mbps Ethernet vs OC12 SONET

Organizations requiring fractional Gbps bandwidth have traditionally turned to OC12 SONET fiber optic service. It’s still an excellent high speed option, but you should also take a look at 600 Mbps Ethernet service. You may be surprised how the two competing connections compare.

OC-12 (622 Mbps) is the next step up from OC-3 (155 Mbps) in the SONET optical carrier hierarchy. You’ll find this service readily available in Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and as a dedicated Internet access connection for mid-size Internet service providers. Large organizations also have OC12 bandwidth connections, especially those with thousands of employees on-site or a need to support high bandwidth applications like medical image transmission or video production and distribution.

Not too many years ago, OC12 was considered a good choice for a carrier fiber optic core network. Now, most regional and national carriers have moved up to OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps or OC-192 at 10 Gbps. Long haul and undersea fiber lines are running at OC-768 (40 Gbps) and moving quickly to support 100 Gbps.

OC12 is most often deployed on a protected SONET ring topology, with two counter-rotating fiber rings. If something in one ring fails, either equipment or a cable break, the other ring will pick up 100% of the traffic within 50 mSec.

Note that an OC12 service is probably not the only traffic on a particular fiber strand. At 622 Mbps, OC12 comes nowhere near using available bandwidth of the fiber. SONET is designed as a Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) system that can easily add or drop common OC service levels such as OC3 and OC12. In addition to the electrically multiplexed services on the fiber, each fiber may also be optically multiplexed into a dozen or more wavelengths using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) equipment.

Carrier Ethernet over fiber is based on packet switching rather than time division multiplexing. Without the strict synchronized channels of TDM, Ethernet is far more scalable. You can order 600 Mbps Ethernet as a replacement for OC12 SONET. You can also order 500 Mbps if that is all you reasonably need. Even more importantly, you can start increasing bandwidth to 700 Mbps, 800 Mbps, 900 Mbps and 1 Gbps as business requirements dictate.

With SONET, the service provider will install a managed router as Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) that includes an interface module specifically designed for the particular OC service level you have installed. The modules for OC3, OC12, and OC48 will plug into the same port on the router, but they are not interchangeable. You need to match the particular interface to the OC service level. That becomes important when you want to implement a service change. The provider will need to roll a truck to either swap out interface modules or completely replace the CPE router.

With Carrier Ethernet, your service provider will install a managed router that can support a particular port speed. For Ethernet over Copper, this is likely 100 Mbps. For fiber, you are likely looking at 1 Gbps, although you can often get equipment rated to 10 Gbps if you expect to be upgrading to that speed level in the foreseeable future. With a 1 Gbps port, you can order whatever service level you need between, say, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps, in 100 Mbps or smaller increments. No equipment changes are needed as you change service levels within that range. You simply call your provider and tell them to increase bandwidth and you’ll see it happen within a few days, sometimes within a few hours.

Beyond scalability, Ethernet has a cost advantage over SONET in most situations. Sometimes the cost difference is dramatic, even half the cost, for Ethernet versus SONET of the same bandwidth. The one limitation that you’ll run into is that SONET has been around a lot longer and is more available than Ethernet over Fiber. Even so, competitive carriers have been aggressively building out their IP networks and may have fiber service closer than you think.

Do you require fractional Gigabit bandwidth services? If so, it is worth your while to compare 600 Mbps Ethernet to OC12 SONET for cost and availability. The same advice is true for other service levels from T1 copper bandwidth on up to 10 Gbps and higher.

10 Gigabit Bandwidth Options

Metropolitan and wide area network speeds are on the rise. Undersea cables are being upgraded from 10 to 40 and soon 100 Gbps bandwidths, with terrestrial fiber runs moving to 100 Gbps now. Likewise, major corporations, healthcare providers and video content producers are starting to feel the squeeze of too small network connections. Fortunately, there are more options and better pricing available today than ever before.

There are several practical solutions to increasing your MAN or WAN bandwidth above the Gigabit per second level and up to 10 Gbps. Let’s see what we can do with SONET, Ethernet, Wavelength and Dark Fiber.

SONET is the telecom fiber optic standard invented by Bell Labs for the telephone industry. It was originally deployed to transport thousands upon thousands of simultaneous telephone calls between switching centers. SONET has evolved to carry data as well as digitized phone calls. As it turns out, voice traffic is in the minority now.

SONET stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork. That describes how it is designed. This is a tightly synchronized time division multiplexed system intended for switched circuit implementation. There are specific service levels associated with SONET levels. These are designed as OC or Optical Carrier levels. The lowest generally available is OC-3 at 155 Mbps, followed by OC-12 at 622 Mbps.

The next level OC-24 takes you to the Gigabit level at 1.24 Gbps. OC-24 isn’t as commonly deployed as the next level, OC-48 at 2.5 Gbps. OC-48 is becoming the new high bandwidth standard for organizations that need high speed private lines or dedicated Internet connections. OC-192 is the 10 Gigabit service level, running at a line rate of 9.95 Gbps. From there you jump up to OC-768 at 40 Gbps. You’ll recognize that as a backbone network bandwidth for fiber optic carriers. OC-768 isn’t generally required at the corporate level just yet.

Notice that there are fairly wide gaps in the service levels between SONET OC levels. If you need 2 Gbps, OC-48 service at 2.5 Gbps makes sense. However, if you need 3 Gbps, you have to go all the way up to OC-192 at 10 Gbps. In some cases, you can find fractional OC-48 service at a better price. This is simply OC-48 that is throttled to provide only the 3 Gbps or other bandwidth you need. There might not be much cost savings, since OC-48 is a standard service level and fractional SONET services are a special order, if available.

Carrier Ethernet is a far more scalable service than SONET. It does have industry standard service levels, such as 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps 10 GigE. Most service providers will allow you to scale your service in small increments up to the maximum capacity of the installed port. With a 10 GigE Port, you can easily get 3 Gbps, 9 Gbps or bandwidths in-between. Since Ethernet networks were designed with this scalability in mind from the beginning, service level changes are fairly automated and can be made in a matter of days, if not hours, with no equipment changes needed.

Wavelength services are offered for high performance latency sensitive applications. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) splits the fiber optic laser beam into dozens of individual wavelengths or colors that act as independent private lines. There is no interconnection between wavelengths. A wavelength is dedicated to your needs and carries your traffic exclusively. Typical speeds available are 1 GigE, 2.5 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 10 GigE and 40 Gbps. Note that both SONET and Ethernet protocols are available over individual wavelengths.

Dark Fiber gives you the ultimate in flexibility. It is simply a glass strand between two of your locations. You can run any protocol you like at any speed you want over as many wavelengths as you care to deploy. Bandwidth is nearly unlimited, but the catch is that you have to buy, install and maintain the transmission equipment that feeds the fiber.

Have your requirements reached the point where 10 Gigabit bandwidth services are a reasonable consideration. The good news is that there are multiple carriers eager to bid for your business between 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps or beyond. Get competitive quotes for Gigabit and 10 Gigabit level fiber optic services now. You may be surprised how affordable these high bandwidth services have become.