Nortel is introducing the industry’s first optical technology that can deliver both 40G and 100G network capacity, enabling four times the network throughput immediately while providing the foundation to simply and affordably increase capacity tenfold as required. This innovative capability equips carriers to keep pace with dramatically increasing demand from bandwidth-sapping applications like IPTV, Internet video, HD programming and mobile video phones.
Nortel’s 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine is a technology platform that enables both 40G and 100G transmission with the same ease and simplicity of today’s 10G networks. Nortel’s technology enhancements allow fiber-optic cables, thinner than a human hair, to carry vast amounts of information globally. The current state-of-the-art networking speed is 10G (Gigabits per second), which can support the bandwidth of 1000 HDTV channels simultaneously. By increasing that capacity to 40G, carriers can transmit four times the traffic over the same link and 10 times the traffic when evolving to 100G.
Two customers - TDC and Neos Networks - have selected the new Nortel solution and trials with other carriers are currently underway globally.
“With Nortel’s new 40G/100G optical technology, carriers can now increase network bandwidth simply and economically,” said Philippe Morin, president, Metro Ethernet Networks, Nortel. “We are seeing significant demands for bandwidth as a result of business-to-business VPNs and the conversion from analog to high-definition video delivery over the desktop. In addition, every operator’s plan to deliver new revenue-generating services such as IPTV, or to sell the latest video-enabled consumer devices, will come to nothing if these exploding bandwidth demands aren’t met. With the coming era of Hyperconnectivity, where every device that should be connected to the network will be connected, the staggering bandwidth demands will only continue upwards.”
“Our 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine technology not only increases network capacity to accommodate the looming bandwidth demands, but is the only one that leverages the carriers’ existing network investment to provide the most cost-effective optical solution,” Morin said.
“Growing traffic patterns with the infusion of video are causing bandwidth constraints in carrier networks worldwide. This trend has the potential to starve new, innovative Internet-based websites, applications, and services of the bandwidth they need, as well as create problems for users accessing real-time content,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research(2). “Carriers recognize this situation and are adding network capacity and also getting in position to add capacity more rapidly. Nortel’s 40G/100G solution is particularly intriguing because it allows carriers the use their existing 10G network with minor upgrades to deliver 40G and all of the new capabilities that affords. The savings in terms of equipment costs, training, maintenance, and operations are reduced accordingly.”
The foundation of the solution lies in Nortel’s breakthrough on developing technology that easily upgrades existing 10G networks to a 40G solution through simple plug-and-play technology components. Other solutions on the market that promise to provide 40G require new fiber optic cables to be buried across the carriers’ service area. Among the key firsts of this solution include Dual Polarization Quadrature Phase Shift Keying with coherent detection that allows 40G operation over a 10G network as well as advanced digital signal processing that removes all compensation requirements from the network, along with their associated capital and operational expenditures. Other approaches require costly equipment that can carry the information light signals less than half the distance of the Nortel equipment.
The solution is built on the Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 which enables the migration to a more agile, adaptive, all-optical network. Nortel recently demonstrated the agility benefits of the new technology at the recent Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) & The National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC) in San Diego, demonstrating 10G, 40G, and 100G wavelengths carried over adjacent 50GHz channels, traversing over 1000km of three types of uncompensated fiber.