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.

Your Ethernet Connection To The World

It’s a given that you need to connect your business location to the outside world to reach your own geographically separated business locations and to reach anyone, anywhere, on Earth. There are various protocols that will get you this connectivity. The most popular is quickly becoming Carrier Ethernet service. Let’s see why.

Carrier Ethernet is an extension to the switched circuit Ethernet protocol that is nearly the universal for Local Area Networks (LANs). You know that there is a distance limitation to LAN Ethernet networks, especially for those running on Cat 5e/6 twisted pair copper wiring. How is it that Ethernet can now reach across town, to the other side of the country and around the world?

You can thank the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) for setting the standards that make long distance Ethernet possible. The MEF is an industry alliance of over 175 organizations who have a vested interest in Carrier Ethernet. Because carriers and manufacturers have agreed to work within these standards, it is possible to have interoperability among Carrier Ethernet systems worldwide.

What’s different about the MAN and WAN versions of Ethernet is that they are transported rather than running natively on the copper or fiber cabling. Technologies that enable this are Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB), Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE), Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) and Carrier-Ethernet Transport (CET). Connectivity-Fault Management (CFM-OAM) technology adds operations, administration and management features needed to operate metro and long haul communications networks.

Note that the term Carrier Ethernet applies to Metropolitan Ethernet, also called Metro Ethernet, as well as longer haul networks that go beyond the immediate metropolitan area that is the domain of Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN). That’s because metro and wide area networks are more alike than different. They all involve use of a common carrier to transport the signal rather than private ownership of an in-house local area network.

The MEF has standardized Carrier Ethernet services regardless of the transport mechanism. E-Line is the familiar private point to point line service that is popular with T1, DS3 and SONET telecom services. E-Line gives you a direct ethernet connection between two Ethernet ports located across town or at any distance. E-LAN, or Ethernet LAN Service, is a multipoint to multipoint mesh network that covers multiple locations. These could be branch offices or franchise locations. E-LAN can bridge your multiple site LANs so that they act like one larger network.

Another service is E-Tree which is a point to multi-point service, not meshed. The center or root locations can communicate with any of the remote or leaf locations, but those leaf locations cannot directly communicate. They have to route all traffic through the roots that may or may not pass it on. This is similar to the proprietary star networks that companies have deployed to create their own private wide area networks.

Ethernet can be carried over twisted pair copper as EoC or Ethernet over Copper. It can also be transported over T1 (EoDS1) or DS3 (EoDS3) to take advantage of existing infrastructure. Ethernet can also be provided over fiber optic networks including legacy SONET/SDH and the newer Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) running on native IP networks. MPLS networks can easily transport Ethernet services as pseudowires using MPLS label switched paths. This expands the offerings to include Virtual Private Wire Service (VPWS) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS).

In addition to the availability of standardized Ethernet services over MAN and WAN distances, Carrier Ethernet also offers the advantages of easy interfacing, granular scalability with nearly any bandwidth level available, and considerably lower cost than traditional telecom services. It is not unusual to get twice the bandwidth for the same price or cut your bandwidth costs in half by switching to Carrier Ethernet services.

Is your company looking for a bandwidth upgrade or to expand connectivity beyond your current network? Perhaps you’re curious to see if you could realize a considerable cost savings? If so, get pricing and options for Carrier Ethernet solutions now.

150 Mbps Ethernet vs OC3 Cost

When DS3 bandwidth at 45 Mbps isn’t enough anymore, it’s time to take a look at higher service levels. So, do you make the jump to OC3 at 155 Mbps or take a look at competing Ethernet services? It can be worth your while to do the comparison. Let’s see why.

Once you start moving into higher bandwidth services, you are looking at fiber optic delivery. Yes, in rare situations you may qualify for 100 Mbps or higher Ethernet over Copper or fixed wireless microwave service. For these to work you need to be very, very close to the provider’s office and, in the case of microwave, have a clear line of site from your building to theirs. For everyone else, it’s fiber optic cabling. Fiber can transport Ethernet or OC3 equally well. So, how do you choose?

One big factor in your decision may be the cost of construction. If there is fiber running nearby, but not yet installed into your building, there is a certain one time cost involved in trenching the fiber and its conduit underground or bringing in the fiber cable overhead. Oddly enough, in densely packed downtown business districts, the cost of fiber construction can be higher than it is out in the burbs. Why? It’s because the available conduits may be all full or hard to obtain and the expense of tunneling under major roadways can be a deal breaker.

Don’t be discouraged by the possibility of high construction costs until you get competitive quotes for fiber optic service to your building. Each situation is unique. The cost for installing similar service to buildings across the street from each other can vary wildly. It’s also possible that you may get your installation for free or at a big discount. Some fiber providers are aggressively building out their networks. If they want your location, they may foot the bill for construction or at least part of it. The more bandwidth you need, the more attractive your situation is. If you are in a multi-tenant building, it could be worth your while to get together with other tenants and offer a much larger bandwidth requirement to lure potential service providers.

Another possibility is that your building is already “lit” for fiber optic service from one or more carriers. Let’s say that someone in your building is already leasing OC3 bandwidth from a telecom carrier. That carrier has already gone to the expense and trouble of bringing in the multi-strand fiber cable and installing termination equipment. They’ve hooked up the other end to their metro fiber network running nearby. How much trouble is it to also provide you with OC3 fiber optic service?

Not much trouble at all. Unlike copper cables, fiber optic bundles can support nearly unlimited bandwidth. It’s a matter of setting their add/drop multiplexers to bring enough bandwidth into the building and demultiplex it into separate services for each subscribing tenant. As you can imagine, the construction costs will be minimal, perhaps even complementary.

The same is true if there is already high bandwidth Ethernet over Fiber service installed in the building. The Ethernet service provider has done all the hard work. They can easily add you to the network rapidly and at minimal cost.

This may be the deciding factor. If one service is already installed and the other is not, the capital cost factor can outweigh other advantages. What if both services are in the building? Then it becomes a more level playing field. In general, Ethernet service is less expensive and easier to scale than SONET services, such as OC3. There is also a service called Ethernet over SONET that uses traditional SONET ring networks to carry the newer Carrier Ethernet protocol. That means a legacy carrier may well be able to offer you either OC3 or 150 Mbps Ethernet at an attractive price over already installed infrastructure.

How much will it cost you to get the high bandwidth business connectivity you require? Each situation needs to be evaluated on its own merit. You can get cost quotes for Ethernet services up to 1 Gbps instantly, with fast response on SONET or Ethernet over SONET services by using the Fiber Network Quotes service for US based locations. US to international destination quotes are also available upon request.