Ciena Advances 100G Deployments

Among the vendors that are benefiting from the speed advance offered by 100G is Ciena, thanks in no small part to technology the company acquired from Nortel. Ciena acquired the Metro Ethernet Networks division of bankrupt telco vendor Nortel in 2010, for $774 million.

In 2008, Nortel was the first vendor to demonstrate 100G coherent technology enabling a 100G signal to be sent over a single optical wavelength. It’s an innovation that four years later in 2012, has led to over 40 major deployments at carriers worldwide.

“Because of our lead with coherent technology we were able to have a 100G technology solution quicker to market,” Helen Xenos, Ciena’s director of product and technology marketing at Ciena told EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet.

Nortel had been shipping coherent optical 100G solution since December of 2009. Xenos noted that at this point, Nortel and its successor Ciena has now shipped over 1,000 line interfaces to over 44 customers around the world.

“We have expanded beyond the trial stage with 100G and we’re now in mainstream wider deployment phase with our customers,” Xenos said.

Xenos added that in 2012, 100G deployments are now accelerating as bandwidth demands from service providers are growing. Ciena has announced a string of 100G wins in recent weeks including Sunset Digital, Janet6, XO and Vodafone, among others.

100G coherent technology can carry significantly more bandwidth than legacy solutions. It should also be noted that 100G is not limited to only 100 Gigabits of traffic that can be carried on an optical fiber.

“You can carry 88, 100 Gigabit wavelength over one fiber with our solution,” Xenos said. “That’s 9 Terabits per second of information that can be transported over one fiber.”

Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
100 Gigabit Adoption Accelerates as 400G Takes Shape

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

News Around the Web