Product News: 400GE Wavelengths and Client-Side Monitoring

Internet traffic continues to rapidly increase, extending the need for more bandwidth and more reliable connections. As one of the leading players on the global WDM market, Telia Carrier is relentlessly evolving our wavelengths offering to address customer needs. After years of development and testing we are now releasing 400GE, providing a dedicated, high capacity transport designed to handle heavy-duty traffic across long distances.

Thanks to our 400GE implementation, the overall number of separate wavelengths and cross connects used to carry IP traffic in our backbone has been reduced.

We found that the biggest challenge with the introduction of 400GE on the long haul was the completely different dynamics compared to the introduction of 100GE. In 2013, when we went from 10GE to 100GE, the transformation came in parallel with a massive improvement in optical efficiency (the amount of data a fiber lit with DWDM could carry). This significantly drove down the equipment cost for all – from vendors and operators to end-customers.

With 400GE the dynamics are different: optical networks have become disaggregated, where the add/drop and the optical line system are independent of each other. This means that a 400GE and 4x100GE will have the same cost base. When we look at the lineside capacity, as we get closer to the Shannon limit*, every generation of new equipment improves the optical efficiency in smaller and smaller incremental steps. This, in combination with the already quite overloaded networks, has led to our decision not to have a fast rollout of 400GE compatible equipment. Instead, we will start introducing 400GE on certain markets and subsequently continue the global rollout from there.

Another exciting news is our beta release of a new innovative way of monitoring the fiber patches between Telia Carrier equipment and customer equipment. This means that Telia Carrier is now able to identify the source of the problem even if it is located on the customer’s assets (including passive items).

This new feature, called Client-Side Monitoring, provides additional value to the customer that increases both network reliability and security. In parallel, it’s offering faster troubleshooting and thereby a better customer experience. No extra equipment is needed from the customer and the service is available as an optional add-on.

2020 was an exceptional year in many aspects and the new reality of working from home dramatically increased the need for stable and reliable networks. This resulted in a more than 75% growth for our Wavelengths product last year. As the current trend follows the same direction, we are not only extending the capacity and monitoring options, but also the customers’ overall choice and experiences.

Johan Godal, Global Product Manager Wavelengths

*Shannon limit refers to the maximum rate of error-free data that can theoretically be transferred over the channel if the link is subject to random data transmission errors, for a particular noise level.