Verizon builds transatlantic mesh with Ciena gear

Verizon Business has built a transatlantic optical mesh network using Ciena equipment, the companies revealed today.

The network takes six paths across the Atlantic Ocean on three different undersea cable networks. It also extends from coastal cabling centers to major cities in Western Europe and the East Coast of the United States.

Though Verizon often employs two equipment suppliers when building networks, the carrier used only Ciena’s CoreDirector platform for this network because the nature of mesh networks required it. “In a mesh, all the nodes have to talk to each other, using a centralized intelligence,” said Ihab Tarazi, Verizon Business’ vice president of global network planning.

The mesh provides redundant paths no slower than 10 Gb/s for both Verizon’s own voice and data traffic and its customers’ private-line traffic. Verizon lets customers using 155-Mb/s circuits or faster specify the standard traffic path as well as three prioritized protection paths.

Verizon chose Ciena in the first half of this year and turned up the network live this summer. The carrier continues to migrate existing traffic to the mesh and plans to expand the network next year to reach Amsterdam, Philadelphia and perhaps Boston.