KELOWNA – If you could widen your highway – your network – by a factor of nine without stringing new fibre, and instead just bringing in new electronics, you’d do it, right?
Of course, and network operators have been deploying CWDM (coarse wavelength division multiplexing) for a few years now. However, said Lindsay Broadband VP engineering Chris Skarica in a seminar today at the Canadian Commtech Trade Show and Seminars in Kelowna, you can’t just add the gear to the network and hope it will work. There are a number of conditions that need to be satisfied.
The technology will expand the network capacity on the edge by up to nine times — "turning a one-lane highway into a nine-lane highway," he said – but before buying, and before installation, "extreme due diligence has to be done."
Temperature swings and humidity can wreak havoc with filters, for example, and Skarica said that all CWDM components should be rated for Telcordia’s test benchmarks GR 1209 and GR 1221. The equipment is tested against pulling and humidity, water immersion, vibration, thermal shock and so on.
Using CWDM can expand the network without stringing more fibre. Making sure its been tested against the environment hardens it.
Skarica also showed a new wireless option from his company which would enable network owners to expand their networks within hours, instead of weeks. What if an enterprise customer wanted fibre service, but standing in the way of the nearest network access point is hundreds of metres of asphalt or some other impediment like a river or train tracks?
Skarica called it free space optics, an LED, not laser, based technology that can be deployed on the strand and delivers up to 155Mbps of network traffic from the existing cable strand without losing any speed.
It can be installed say, within 12 hours and is meant to be used until that fibre is installed – which normally takes weeks. After his session, Skarica said the technology was tested over 64 days in Georgia and suffered just 18 total seconds of downtime – even during the two hurricanes that rolled through during that time.
The technology was pioneered by the U.S. military as a quick, inexpensive, and secure way to communicate. It mounts on the existing HFC Cable Strand and transmits a 30 degree infrared beam using a 60-90VAC power supply. It has an integrated DOCSIS 1.1/2.0 cable modem, SFP based fibre interface, causes no RF interference and requires no licensing fees.
"This can be part of (the network operator’s) high service philosophy," added Skarica.
– Greg O’Brien
