MRV lays out 100G optical transport plans

MRV Communications today laid out its road map to 100g and a customer, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, ready to put it into action.

MRV’s Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical system will be based on standards like DP-QPSK modulation and coherent detection to extend the range and keep network power requirements low. As with all vendors, the challenge for MRV is to time the availability of relatively expensive first-generation 100 Gb/s transport systems with demand. That time has come, especially to support large data centers and Internet exchange points, said David Stehlin, senior vice president of sales and marketing for MRV’s Optical Communications Systems (OCS) division, who recently joined the company from Overture Networks.

“Customers are really starting to ask for 100 gig,” Stehlin said.
One of the first customers for the MRV optical platform will be Amsterdam Internet Exchange, an existing MRV user of MRV’s 10 Gb/s Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical gear. It will shift gradually to 100 Gb/s systems to meet its traffic growth needs. AMS-IX has over 430 interconnected global networks and traffic peak of at 1.3 Terabit per second. It also hosts the first mobile peering point worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX).

“What’s important to them is low power, massive speed and low latency,” Stehlin said, noting that while low-latency was initially viewed as a specific application for certain types of users, mainly financial institutions, other customers are seeing the value as well. “Customers are looking to be able to build more efficient links between data centers – to be more efficient in how the network is built, including low latency and low power requirements,” he said.

MRV has been admittedly quiet in recent years, Stehlin said, but is aiming to raise its profile in both the optical transport and carrier Ethernet markets. It faces competitors among larger vendors including Alcatel-Lucent and Huwei, among others, along with optical specialists like Ciena, Adva and others.

While large telcos like Verizon have garnered attention for 100 Gb/s backbone upgrades, demand for 100 Gb/s pipes is coming largely today from newer providers looking to bypass legacy carriers that may be moving too slowly to serve the early adopters of such big pipes, Stehlin said. He pointed to data center providers (including large enterprises connecting their own data centers), Internet exchange and Ethernet exchanges as the biggest drivers of 100 Gb/s transport, offering high-speed alternatives to traditional telco networks and services.