Verizon's Trans-Pacific Mesh
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Verizon Business Enhances Performance and Reliability of Pacific Undersea Cable Systems on Global Network
Mesh Configuration Uses Five Paths to Enhance Diversity and Reliability, With Two More Paths to be Added in Second Half 2008
[FAC: By numerous counts, mesh architectures trump those that are based solely on rings, provided that all affected service providers continue to play nice with one another during failures and other times of stress that demand cooperation.]
February 25, 2008 -- BASKING RIDGE, N.J. -- Verizon Business has deployed a technologically advanced network configuration on the trans-Pacific portion of its global network to provide more diverse routes to benefit large-business and government customers.
This network architecture, called meshing, provides a total of five paths for rerouting traffic in the event of a cable cut or other network disruption. This five-way mesh network design provides significantly enhanced reliability for customer voice and data traffic traversing the Pacific Ocean.
Previously, the trans-Pacific transport network used a ring configuration to provide redundant paths. However, that architecture provided protection against only a single failure within any network ring, and service restoration on the alternate path usually increased the transmission's latency - that is, the time it takes for data sent from its entry point in the network to reach its destination.
[fac: note the elongated path that results from a break on a SONET ring that has undergone self-healing, as shown in the diagram below:
End note.]
Additionally, in the event of a service interruption on two or more segments of the same network system, physical restoration of the cable may not be available until a cable ship is deployed to make repairs.
The new Pacific mesh design provides five paths of 10-gigabit capacity, offering automatic restoration and real-time management of voice and data traffic on the Pacific undersea cable routes on Verizon Business' global network. The five paths that constitute the mesh provide predictable latency in the event of a network disruption, something that is particularly important to business customers today.
The Pacific mesh is currently deployed on two major submarine cable network systems in the Pacific called Japan-US and China-US. With completion of the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable in the third quarter of this year, the company will expand meshing to include Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. By year-end, Verizon Business will have seven-way mesh diversity deployed on the trans-Pacific network.
An industry leader in undersea meshing, Verizon Business in 2006 was the first service provider to deploy six-way diversity for services traversing cable systems in the Atlantic. In 2007, one additional segment was added to the Atlantic mesh network which now provides a seven-way diversity mesh for Verizon Business multinational customers.
"We have seen a dramatic improvement in our overall network performance in the Atlantic since we introduced meshing," said Yali Liu, director of Asia-Pacific network planning for Verizon Business. "We're now extending this same benefit into the Asia-Pacific region, and we will continue to expand the enhanced diversity and reliability of a meshed network to meet the growing demands of our global customers."
The Pacific mesh network gives Verizon Business significant flexibility of routing choices in the region. For example, if there is a natural disaster, like a major earthquake, Verizon Business can automatically reroute customer traffic to an equivalent available network path.
"This mesh network design allows our multinational customers to continue receiving the high-quality network performance and reliability they expect from Verizon Business," said Liu. Verizon Business currently is provisioning customers onto the Pacific mesh network.
Operating one of the largest global IP networks, which spans 150 countries across six continents with more than 485,000 route miles, the company is involved in more than 65 submarine cable networks carrying mission-critical traffic for multinational customers worldwide. The company also has ownership in more than 18 cable systems in the Asia-Pacific region including: Japan-U.S., China-U.S., Southern Cross (U.S., New Zealand and Australia) and SEA-ME-WE-4.
Verizon Business is also a founding partner and landing party in a consortium building the Trans Pacific Express -- the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the U.S. mainland and China. The TPE system will use the latest optical technology to provide greater capacity and higher speeds to meet the dramatic increase in demand for IP. The TPE system will complement the company's existing submarine cables in the Asia-Pacific region, providing further diversity of its other undersea routes.
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For more information, visit www.verizonbusiness.com.
Media Contact:
Linda Laughlin, Verizon Business, +1 918-590-5595
Jo Perrin, Verizon Business, +44 770 252 5868
URL for this PR: newscenter.verizon.com
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