Datacenters featuring dark fiber
Companies tend to use datacenters more and more, often combined with fall-back locations. In addition to this, due to heavy digitizing, the amount of data to be carried and stored rapidly increases.
Dark fiber (unlit fiber) connections are regularly used to connect to these datacenters and alternative locations, allowing you unlimited possibilities for data transmission.
Dark fiber is a leased fiber optic cable running between sites characterized by not having a service provided on the wire by the leasing company, there is no equipment plugged into it that would generate light. Traditionally, a dark fiber connection only transports one application, e.g. Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. Naturally, your dark fiber provider will gladly allow you to lease multiple fiber pairs, one for each application you want to run … but that is no longer necessary.
Applying WDM technology enables transportation of multiple applications over one fiber pair. WDM, or 'Wavelength Division Multiplexing' allows each application to be transported via its own infrared wavelength.
Why apply WDM technology?
This technology lets you use several applications on one fiber pair at the same time, e.g. Gigabit Ethernet plus Fibre Channel, plus telephony, plus backup traffic. Speeds up to 10 Gbps per application have proven to be possible. Data streams run completely separate from each other and thus do not influence each other at all.
Your costs of exploitation remain low, as they are still limited to the one fiber pair you lease. This allows you to efficiently economize within a short time span: no digging needed and much more bandwidth availability than before!
Which types of WDM technology are available?
For speeds up from 4 Gbps usually DWDM is applied: 'Dense Wave Division Multiplexing' enables long distance transmission of tens to hundreds of channels. That may appear expensive, but since this technology is also available for smaller configurations of 4 to 8 channels, it still proves to be more cost efficient than leasing extra fiber pairs.
When using lower speeds, e.g. for Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel, usually CWDM is applied: 'Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing' is a less expensive technique, applicable for shorter ranges such as city rings.
Qi ict and WDM
Qi ict at this time has delivered many successful projects applying DWDM as well as CWDM technology. Companies thus have been enabled to obtain high speed connections enhancing their own or leased fiber connection with CWDM or DWDM equipment from MRV Communications, Microsens or Cube Optics.