Verizon 100Gb Ethernet Deployment

Following years of tests, trials and a commercial launch in Europe, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) has announced it will commercially deploy 100Gbit/s optical transport connections in the U.S. within the coming weeks. (See Verizon Announces 100G in US, Verizon Deploys 100G Ethernet in Europe and Verizon Switches On 100G in Europe.)

Using equipment from Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN) (coherent optical transport) and Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) (core routers), the same supplier combo as in Europe, Verizon will light up Chicago to New York, Sacramento to Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Kansas City.

"Advancing to 100G is a significant step in strengthening our global IP network to handle the bandwidth demands of our customers -- whether it's large enterprises or the average consumer," noted Ihab Tarazi, the operator's VP of network planning, in the official news announcement. "Besides greater scalability and network efficiencies, we also expect 100G deployment to improve latency on a route-by-route basis."

Verizon has long been committed to 100Gbit/s technologies, regarding it as "the new standard -- the new 10Gbit/s" (see video below), and has been waiting for the various network elements to become available at price points that suit its business plan.

Why this matters
This is an indication that true 100Gbit/s technology is not only ready to deploy in commercial networks but that systems prices have reached an inflection point. Verizon is one of the world's leading carrier supporters of the new generation of backbone transport technologies and this move will send a positive signal to other operators that the market is ready to support an acceleration in deployments.

So now the question for the Verizon team is -- what's next? (See Planning for 100G & Beyond.)

For more
The 100 Gbit/s sector, and beyond, has been white hot in 2011:

• Xelerated Adds 100G Traffic Manager
  
• 100G Watch: Juniper Makes a Deal
  
• NEC Has 100G Ready
  
• OFC/NFOEC 2011: Coherent Detection at Oclaro
  
• OFC/NFOEC 2011: 400Gbit/s, Terabit – Whatever It Takes
  
• OFC/NFOEC 2011: ADVA CTO Foresees Flexible Optics
  
• Nokia Siemens Demos 400G Upgrade
  
• Digital Lightwave Adds 100G
  
• JDSU Adds 40G, 100G Pieces
  
• Ciena, Internet2 to Build National Network
  
• OFC/NFOEC 2011: 100G Market Growth Ahead
  
• OSA 2011: Optical Consolidation & 100G
  
• 100G Decision Time Looms
  
• NSN, Juniper in 100G Interop Trial
  
• Interoute Completes 100G Subsea Transmission
  
• Ciena Intros Coherent Chips
  
• ADVA in for the Long Haul With 100G

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading

Japan's Internet remains Up!

Interesting how reliable Broadband has become over the last several years.

Computerworld - Japan's Internet infrastructure has remained surprisingly unaffected by last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami, according to an analysis by Internet monitoring firm Renesys.

Most Web sites are operational and the Internet remains available to support critical communication functions, Renesys CTO James Cowie wrote in a blog over the weekend.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake off the Japanese coast, about 100 of Japan's 6,000 network prefixes -- or segments -- were withdrawn from service. But they started reappearing on global routing tables just a few hours later. Similarly, traffic to and from Japan dropped by about 25 gigabits per second right after the Friday quake, but returned to normal levels a few hours later. And traffic at Japan's JPNAP Layer 2 Internet exchange service appears to have slowed by just 10% since Friday, according to Renesys.

"Why have we not seen more impact on international Internet traffic from this incredibly devastating quake? We don't know yet," Cowie wrote.

Clearwire CEO Resigns

Clearwire named its chairman John Stanton as interim CEO, after Bill Morrow resigned from the position citing personal reasons. Stanton, a former CEO of VoiceStream Wireless which later became T-Mobile USA, takes over immediately while the Wimax operator seeks a replacement. Stanton became chairman in January, after serving as a director of the company since November 2008. Morrow will continue to serve as an advisor to the company during the transition period. The company has appointed a search committee, chaired by board member Dennis Hersch, to lead the hiring process for a new CEO. At the same time, Clearwire CFO Erik Prusch has been promoted to the newly created position of chief operating officer (COO). In this position, Prusch will be responsible for the company's day-to-day operations, including wholesale and retail sales, marketing, customer service, supply chain, human resources, IT and network operations. In addition, Hope Cochran, Clearwire's senior vice president and treasurer, has been promoted to the position of CFO. Cochran will be responsible for all of the company's financial and investor related functions, including overseeing Clearwire's ongoing fundraising efforts. The company also announced that Mike Sievert, chief commercial officer, and Kevin Hart, CIO, are both leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Clearwire said the management changes "are not expected to impact the company's progress on an agreement with Sprint to resolve wholesale pricing disputes", and the company "believes that an agreement with Sprint is imminent".

Verizon starts standards-based 100Gb Ethernet rollout

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2011/03/04/verizon-starts-standards-based-100gb-ethernet-rollout-40092031/

The 100Gb Ethernet standard was ratified at the end of May last year. Routers and blades based on 100Gb Ethernet have appeared since then, but Verizon said on Wednesday that the link on the company's European backbone network was the first to show the fruits of the standardisation. The routers came from Juniper Networks and the coherent optical transport system from Ciena.

"We don't have to look too far into the future to know that bandwidth needs will continue to grow, so Verizon is taking this next step of deploying a 100Gb Ethernet link to stay ahead of that demand," said Verizon global network planning chief Ihab Tarazi in a statement. "We will continue to deploy this technology on our global network where demand is highest."

According to Verizon, the new link can carry up to 10 times the amount of network traffic that would be manageable on a standard connection. The technology is suited to very high-bandwidth applications, being used for example in an upgrade to Cern's research network infrastructure.

On Friday, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Juniper also announced a step forward in the use of 100Gb Ethernet equipment: the two companies have successfully tested 100Gb Ethernet interoperability between NSN's hiT 7300 DWDM optical transport network kit and Juniper's T1600 core router.