Verizon Delivers 100G Speeds to U.S. Internet Backbone
gigaom.com
By Stacey Higginbotham Mar. 30, 2011, 7:17am PT No Comments
Unlike the cap and congestion crowd, Verizon Communications keeps upgrading its network planning for the upcoming cloud and streaming era. Verizon plans to upgrade backbone pipes to 100 Gigabit per second capacity along select U.S. routes by the second quarter of this year. The network segments include Chicago to New York, Sacramento, Calif. to Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Kansas City, and follow similar upgrades made in Europe this year.
We are rapidly progressing to a 100 Gigabit world. As companies put more of their computing in the cloud, reducing latency and adding capacity through faster backbone speeds is essential. On the consumer side the adoption of video streaming, interactive gaming and video chat will also put pressure on the backbone networks as more bits traverse the web. Verizon’s consumer fiber efforts or cloud computing business can’t sustain high speeds at the edge without capacity at the core, so that’s what these upgrades are about.
Moving to 100G enables Verizon to increase bandwidth efficiency on its existing fiber infrastructure. By installing new equipment on the network while retaining use of the current fiber system, the company can carry up to 10 times the amount of network traffic carried on a standard route. Optical efficiencies also are gained from carrying traffic on a single 100G wavelength as opposed to 10 wavelengths, each operating at 10 gigabits per second. Verizon’s rollout of 100G in the U.S. will use Juniper Networks’ routers and Ciena’s 100G coherent optical transport solution (check out the video on this from 2008!). Verizon also used Juniper and Ciena equipment for its 100G deployment in Europe earlier this ye |
