ADVA Optical Networking (FSE: ADV) has added a coherent express layer to its flagship FSP 3000 platform. The new coherent express layer technology has been optimized for 100-Gbps transmission and to enable service providers to use optical network resources flexibly and on-demand.
The new coherent express layer capabilities include close interworking with the IP/MPLS layer, leveraging both the company’s control plane expertise as well as its partnership with Juniper Networks, Stephan Rettenberger, vice president, marketing, and Jim Theodoras, director of technical marketing, told Lightwave. The new capabilities are targeted at helping carriers consolidate nodes and simplify network infrastructure. They also are part of an effort to raise ADVA Optical Networking’s profile in core network applications.
Key elements of the FSP 3000’s new feature set includes:
- Coherent transmission technology, paired with optimized amplification schemes (including Raman), fully integrated into the control plane. Because ADVA Optical Networking’s service manager has full control over the links, carriers can employ their bandwidth pipes for efficiently and intelligently the company says.
- A reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) capability based on modular building blocks that support colorless, directionless, contentionless, and gridless configurations. The integrated amplification provides lowest nodal loss and highest transmission performance, the company says. The ROADM capabilities also fall under the purview of the service manager.
- As the previous two bullet points illustrate, the control plane enables end-to-end service and bandwidth management by acting as the messaging layer for the aforementioned service manager. The control plane provides visibility at the routing layer and full control of the transport layer, which enables the service manager to quickly bring up and/or modify any service between any two locations, ADVA Optical Networking asserts.
Gridless ROADM capabilities have often been associated with accommodating transmission speeds of 400 Gbps or greater. However, Theodoras told Lightwave that such features have applicability in a wide variety of networks, even at current data rates. For example, he asserts that as carriers attempt to run coherent-enabled 100-Gbps wavelengths alongside 10- and 2.5-Gbps traffic, they’ll find guard bands a necessity – and a gridless capability will enable carriers to accommodate those guard bands more easily.
“[Gridless] also lets you play with some of the edges of the bandwidth,” Theodoras added. “So as you go through multiple stages – and we have one network where there are 18 ROADM nodes to go through – the edges of a band is where your performance degradation occurs and where a lot of things happen; that’s where the various mixing occurs.”
At least one analyst believes ADVA Optical Networking is on the right track with its approach. “Today’s present solution – simply adding more bandwidth – does not sufficiently solve the underlying capacity and efficiency problems,” stated Eve Griliches, managing partner at ACG Research. “Instead, service providers are asking for an agile and scalable approach with fewer sites, which will enable operators to architect networks with intelligence to increase their profitability in this increasingly competitive market. ADVA Optical Networking is addressing all of these issues.”
The new Agile Core Express capabilities should be available in the third quarter of this year, according to Rettenberger.
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