Behind Verizon’s latest 100G deployment plans

Verizon’s plan to deploy 100G transport equipment on more than 10 U.S. routes this year, announced this week, is expected to generate substantial network efficiencies and reduce latency. In an interview, Darryl Wilson, manager of global optical transport technology and planning for Verizon, provided some additional details about the technology upgrade.

“We want to prevent fiber exhaust,” said Wilson of the upgrade.

One of the ways the carrier expects to do this is through circuit consolidation to create optical efficiencies. “You can take multiple lower-level circuits that are on their own dedicated fiber and move them to a 100G optimized system,” Wilson explained. “You consolidate traffic and recover power and space. And it’s easier to maintain one system versus multiple systems. There are huge operating efficiencies as you go to 100G.”

As part of its upgrade, Verizon also plans to migrate its existing intelligent mesh switching architecture from lower-speed links to 100G. Those links are core circuits between mesh nodes, Wilson said. “They’re typically long-distance nodes and they have lower level circuit capability on the client-facing side.”

Using intelligent mesh switching, Verizon will be able to provision multiple services and aggregate traffic through the mesh nodes and switch it to a high-speed port, Wilson said. “You’d aggregate it, map it onto an OTN frame and send it [out] on the line side,” he said. “The real purpose is to aggregate traffic of multiple types and restore them quickly.”

Reduced latency results from the coherent optics used in the Ciena optical transport system (Verizon expects better economics, lower latency with U.S. 100G deployment) that will underlie Verizon’s 100G routes. Coherent optics uses digital signal processing to address dispersion compensation, eliminating the need to use additional fiber at repeater points. Eliminating that extra fiber reduces latency—and latency has become an increasingly important consideration for carriers as they seek to support the needs of financial industry and other clients.

Verizon’s recent 100G history

Verizon has been a pioneer in deploying 100G technology, having conducted a variety of trials (Verizon trials 100G in routed configuration) and having completed limited deployments in Europe (CP: Verizon to deploy 100G Ethernet on European link).

Although most of the attention has been on Verizon’s use of 100G for long-haul networks, the company also has deployed 100G equipment in metro networks (CP: Verizon 100G Ethernet in the metro).