Next Generation Communications Blog

Optical Networking

200G Optical Networks: What you need to know

By: Earl Kennedy, IP Transport Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

Optical network operators have already made the move to 100G. But skyrocketing bandwidth demand means many are already pondering what’s next. With a 200G optical solution hitting the market, you probably have questions about when to move to 200G optical – and what you need to know when you make that move.

Agile Optical Networking Breaks Speed Records and Meets Customer Demands

Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

With adequate bandwidth and network speeds now a cornerstone of life for both businesses and consumers, optical transport is increasingly becoming a key solution for network operators.

The market for optical network equipment is expected to reach $15 billion by 2018, according to research firm, Dell’Oro. Optical transport of the 100G variety is expected to make up 80 percent of that demand.

Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) also recently released a report predicting that the market for 400G will hit $528 million by 2019, and the market for supporting optical components and silicon devices will reach $195 million that year.

Clearly, optical networking matters. It is easy to see why when looking at the recent achievements of Alcatel-Lucent’s agile optical networking technologies.

Metro Transport Networks in Trouble?

Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

Spoiler alert: The added capacity of 100G-capable transport systems will not be enough to meet the coming demand within Metro Transport Networks.

First, there are numbers that have service providers worried. A recent Bell Labs study showed that metro traffic will grow by more than 560 percent by 2017, twice the growth of backbone network traffic. The biggest drivers will be video and cloud traffic. Bell Labs also predicts that while 57 percent of network traffic terminated in the metro back in 2012, by 2017 a full 75 percent of traffic will terminate within metro networks.



Tuck Telekom with Alcatel-Lucent Help Achieves Data Transfer World Record with 100G Optical Transport

Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

How much data can be pushed along a single fiber cable in a commercial network?  The answer is roughly 8 Terabits per second, according to a new Guinness World Record.

Türk Telekom, Turkey’s leading telecom service provider, broke the record with help from Alcatel-Lucent Agile Optical Networking technology, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent post. The record, which is the equivalent of transferring 250 high definition movies across the cable per second, relied on Alcatel-Lucent’s 100G optical technology. The transmission took place between Ankara and Istanbul on the Türk Telekom dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) backbone network in the summer of 2013.

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