Lightpath and Ciena Deploy 400G Protected Circuit

Lightpath Deploys Industry’s First 400G Protected Circuit Utilizing Power-Efficient Ciena WaveLogic 5 Nano Coherent Optics

Raises ceiling for high-availability network services while using 80% less power

Lightpath and Ciena announced the deployment of the industry’s first known 400 Gb/s protected optical circuit utilizing power-efficient and high-performance pluggable technologies. The achievement increases the maximum bandwidth levels that customers can utilize to deploy persistent, mission-critical services while utilizing 80% less electricity.

Lightpath’s challenge for a hyperscale customer was to provide a 400 Gb/s geographically diverse and protected circuit over a distance of approximately 200 miles, including traversing numerous water crossings, and utilizing an average of 8 POPs (points-of-presence) per side of the circuit, all while being able to maintain a very aggressive failover time. Lightpath and Ciena jointly designed the end-to-end solution utilizing Lightpath’s dense fiber plant combined with Ciena’s 6500 packet optical platform powered by high-performance WaveLogic 5 Nano coherent pluggable optics at the end points running over Ciena’s Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) flexible photonic layer along the routes.

Key Facts:

Lightpath designed the optimal solution fiber routes that would utilize optical layer protection, which reduced customer circuit handoffs in half while still satisfying the customer requirement of less than 50ms switch times.
Lightpath custom designed the two approximately 200-mile wavelength routes utilizing a combination of newly constructed and existing fiber routes. Lightpath worked with Ciena engineers to identify the equipment and locations that would be needed to maintain signal integrity, traverse necessary POPs along the routes and maintain the protection services within the stringent failover time specification.
With support for both standard interoperable and extended reach modes, Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Nano solution delivers the highest 400G pluggable performance in the industry leveraging 70GBaud symbol rate and requires 50% less physical space compared to standard transponder deployments.

Executive Comments:

“This protected 400G solution, in support of a hyperscale customer, exemplifies Lightpath’s innovative and problem-solving approach to meet and exceed our customer’s network requirements. Together with Ciena, we have pushed the boundaries of high availability bandwidth solutions, while also utilizing power and space friendly technologies.”

- Chris Morley, CEO, Lightpath

“As Lightpath continues to expand its footprint, it needs a network that can scale and adapt to handle unpredictable bandwidth demands. Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical innovations allow Lightpath to increase capacity while achieving greater power efficiencies and reliability."

- Kevin Sheehan, CTO of the Americas, Ciena

Source: Lightpath and Ciena media announcement

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