OpVista has engineered a solution for aggregating Gigabit Ethernet traffic streams into a 10 GbE handoff on metro and regional backbone networks. The company calls its solution EtherWave. It is based on its own OpVista2000 TR-110 GbE “muxponder” and TR-71 10GbE transponder; it also incorporates Layer 2 functionality.
Carriers can devote a fiber for each new application carried over a GbE, but the operations and management associated with this practice becomes expensive, and exhausts valuable fiber plant. A typical alternative, OpVista explained, is to multiplex the individual multiple GbE streams carrying different applications into a single 10G pipe for transport across the network. At the edge, operators must then install a router to demultiplex the 10G pipe into its individual GbE streams.
This approach, OpVista said, has proven expensive and has added unnecessary complexity into network management.
Incorporating DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) to boost the capacity of each fiber solves the first “fiber centric” problem, but does not eliminate the need for a router at the edge of the network.
The company’s EtherWave solution is designed to address that issue by combining 10 GbE “client side” signals into one 10-G ITU-compliant DWDM wavelength on the “network side.” OpVista can then handoff a 10GbE signal to a router located in a central office or hub node facility, with the individual GbE streams tagged separately to allow distribution to the appropriate service. This aggregation and segregation eliminates the need for a costly edge router.