Terabits hold no fears for this box
Equipment maker Ciena has built a WaveRouter to cater for bandwidth-hungry services like 5G, high-speed broadband, enterprise business services and the cloud. By blending IP, optical and computing in a single box the WaveRouter can cope with between 6Tbs and an anticipated 192Tbs future demand by service providers who are dealing with unprecedented traffic demand.
Today’s metro routers are two dimensional and that is no longer good enough for complicated cloud world that is enveloping thm. They can only think of computing scales and network fabrics without considering other high-performance coherent optics, according. Ciean. So they lack the flexibility needed to adapt to controlled environmental constraints like power, space, cooling, and ‘blast radius’. As metro bandwidth demands rise, operators are forced to make inefficient trade-offs between environmental constraints.
WaveRouter is purpose-built to immediately provide high performance coherent optics, said Ciena. In the future it can raise its game accordingl to offer the coherent ‘optics’, computingcapacity and network fabrics. It does this by using a scalable and flexible interface and fabric boxes, with no midplane or backplane constraints. The angled faceplates on the WaveRouter have hidden powers too, because they make it possible to have an ultra-thin, cheap interconnection that uses minimal power. .
By adding each increment of a 6Tb/s metro router an operators can ramp the bandwidth up to 192Tb/s. At the same time, its ‘blast radius’ of heat isminimsed so there is no danger of thermal hot spots building up in the data centre. This coolig efficiency means that the expense of ‘parking space’ in data centre racks is minimised, because these routers will keep their cool even when jammed like sardines.
Ciena’s Coherent Routing strategy allows it to be so fast? It combines the traditional chassis and leaf-spine design, and uses WaveLogic coherent optics and intelligent multi-layer control and automation for a high-performance. It’s also easy to operate and, the vendor claims, a greener coherent routing system. Ciena claims the kit can cut the trade-offs over space, power, cooling and scalability, through its ‘architecture’, transport technologies and software.
Metro networks desperately need modernization, according to Senior Analyst Sterling Perrin at Heavy Reading. They need to be on a different scale, more reliable and ready for the vagaries of cloud computing. With a sufficneitnly good rdesign they can meet all these criteria and be chepae to run and sustainable, says the analyst. “Heavy Reading survey data indicates many operators are seeking change in how they architect their metros” said Perrin.
Perrin described the Ciena WaveRouter as a ‘coherent metro router’ because it combines IP and optical coordination, open API-based automation and a hardware building-block desing. This allows it to offer redundant power and cooling, This in turns means it can ramp up computing as needed and ‘scale out’ the switching fabric. “This is the type of innovative metro architecture that network operators are looking for,” said Heavty Reading analyst Perrin.
In a cloud-driven, always-connected world service providers need to simplify their networks through convergence but they’ve had to compromise on capacity, operational ease and sustainability – until now, said Scott McFeely, Senior Vice President, Global Products and Services, Ciena.
“WaveRouter invented a way to get the best in IP, coherent optics and flexible photonics driven by multi-layer operations for real performance and energy advantages,” said McFeeley.