Over the years, optical channel rates have grown from 2.5G to 10G and from 10G to 40G and now to a whopping 100G. XKL recently announced that they have designed and engineered a 100G DWDM Universal Starter Kit to boost optical channel rates to 100G per lambda. The kit supports 10G and 100G on the client side. XKL’s 100G DWDM Universal Starter Kit was designed to provide 10G DWDM infrastructure compatibility, easy system deployment and management, and high value, powerful products that enable low latency data transmission.
“100G DWDM optical networking transport requires advanced modulation techniques to meet network operators´ requirements”, states Len Bosack, XKL CEO. “This latest development is one of many we will announce this year as we continue to respond to our customers´ demands for high performance optical networking products.”
The number of Internet users continues to grow and the amount of bandwidth required by users is increasing. Industry analysts predict yearly traffic growth of 50% to 60% and this traffic growth is the underlying driver for 100 Gigabit (Gbit) Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network transport. As consumers demand ever more bandwidth, the strain on metro networks and core backbone networks increases and threatens to outpace capacity in the future. As we find more ways to connect with everyone and everything, technology must evolve to meet those demands.
Changes in network architecture are also causing a shift to higher-bit-rate networks. Today’s providers are moving from separate networks for each access technology or service, to putting it all onto one IP backbone. This requires the core backbone to handle much more traffic. When a large carrier recently merged multiple networks, for example, it led to integrated networks overflowing onto one large backbone that required an immediate upgrade to 40G and is now 100G capable.
Reducing the number of optical wavelengths (“lambdas”) used, and the need to light new fiber, is another benefit of 100G. Larger bandwidth wavelengths have always promised better operation efficiencies merely because there are fewer wavelengths to manage and a smaller number of parts in the network that can fail.
The tenfold expansion of Ethernet to 100G will aid capacity-constrained data centers and long-haul transmission routes. Ethernet data rates have always increased by a factor of 10, while traditional SONET/SDH and optical data rates have increased by four, keeping Ethernet and transport on separate migration paths until they converged at 10 GB/s. This convergence makes 100G DWDM very attractive for its flexibility, cost points and ease of deployment. As the need for bandwidth keeps growing, XKL will continue to design and develop leading edge enterprise and ISP fiber optic networking equipment.
