It’s been a year since Ciena unleashed its WaveLogic Ai coherent optical technology on the networking world. And in that short time this solution has seen 40 customer deployments and nearly 10,000 coherent modems shipped.
Ciena says WaveLogic Ai is the only 400G-capable solution being deployed today. And deployments for this offering have ramped three times faster than 100G did.
An impressive list of network operators including Telstra (News - Alert), Vodafone, and many others have implemented WaveLogic Ai to get more capacity of our their optical networks. This technology allows network operators to multiply the capacity of their wavelengths – regardless of distance. This tunable capability is possible due in part to network programmability.
“How has this changed the optical industry?” Ciena posits in a recent blog. “Global content network providers are now building new long-haul DCI networks deploying 200G and 300G wavelengths instead of 100G, while realizing dramatic cost and operational savings.”
For example, Vodafone (News - Alert) recently completed a Flex Ethernet network trial using WaveLogic Ai. This Ciena solution is also a good match for subsea applications. In fact, undersea networks represent a quarter of the WaveLogic Ai deployments.
Angola Cables is using WaveLogic Ai to support 200G on more than 10,000 kilometers. And JISC, Unitymedia (News - Alert), and Vodafone New Zealand have employed the Ciena technology to support 400G wavelength connections. Also, Tele2 Netherlands is in the midst of installing 300G and 400G wavelengths, which will give it 40 times more capacity than it had before.
These capacity gains are important to help network operators meet the demands of such applications as interactive gaming and video. Heavy demands by such applications are pushing network operators to seek out and implement solutions that offer them greater agility and more operational efficiencies.
Edited by Maurice Nagle