Metro Capacity - Metro Wavelength

Summary

Open Peering offers Metro Fiber Wavelengths (light colors) between almost all neutral datacenters in and around Amsterdam.

Wavelengths can by lid by endusers at gigabit speed very easily, directly from their switch or router equipment, and can be used for all types of traffic including standard ethernet, dot1.q VLAN ethernet trunks and MPLS.

Wavelengths are a passive and transparant (no active carrier switch equipment inbetween) form of Metro Capacity and therefor do not depend on availability and funcionality of carrier equipment, like for example Metro Ethernet does. Wavelengths are substantially lower in cost then Metro Fiber.

A standard (on-net) wavelength is € 500 per month and €1.500 install. Which datacenters are on-net, and what the price for other datacenter locations is, can be found in de conditions part below.

Description

CWDM based

The Metro Wavelengths Open Peering offers are based on Coarse Wavelength-division multiplexing, or CWDM in short, and compliant with the offical ITU-T G.694.2 CWDM grid using 20 nm wide channel spacing and implemented using only the higher part of the standard wavelength range (1470 through 1610 nm).

1470

1490

1510

1530

1550

1570

1590

1610

Lid by customer

The Metro Wavelengths provided by Open Peering are dark, which means that the customer uses lasers in it's own switch or router equipment which light up the fiber to make actual network connections.

After an order has been placed, Open Peering assigns a specific wavelength to the customer and specifies the minimum power budget (expressed in dB) the customer lasers will have to confirm to (largely based on the distance between two connected datacenters in kilometers).

Passive

The Open Peering Metro Wavelength service is a passive service which means that no active network equipment (e.g. routers, switches, or anything that uses electrical power) is used by Open Peering to provide the service. The lack if active equipment reduces the chance on failures, outages or performance issues, and guarantees the absence of any software limitations.

Any service

Customers can use the Metro Wavelengts of Open peering for all types of services included standard ethernet, dot1.q VLAN trunks, MPLS, etc.

Gigabit capacity

Open Peering Metro Wavelengths are most commonly used for 1 Gbit/s ethernet connections. For 10 Gbit/s Gigabit ethernet connections currently an Open Peering Metro Fiber is still required. Lasers which to 10 Gbit/s ethernet over a CWDM wavelength have been announced but are not yet on the market.

Physical route

The Open Peering Metro Wave service is implemented over a physical fiber that runs via a route through well protected underground tubes between two datacenters. The service availability is directly dependant of the availability of that underlying fiber. If however that tube and fiber are physically damaged, for example by a digging excavator, the Metro Wave service is also impacted and, different then with Metro Ethernet, NOT automatically rerouted via a different physical fiber route.

Outrages and repair

For restoration of the service after an outage, the physical fiber needs to be repaired. Repair can take upto 4 to 8 hours, If there is damage on the tube or fiber, but the Metro Wave service was not impacted, still emergency maintenance might be required to repair the tube and fiber and prevent future outages. The chance on an unplanned outage or emergency maintenance is very small: on average less then once per 5 years.

Planned maintenance

During planned maintenance on the physical fiber or tube, for example due to government ordered diversions, the Metro Wave service will also be down and not automatically be rerouted over other paths. Such diversions don't happen often (on average less then 1 time per year), are always announced well in advance and are executed only during a nightly maintenance window. Outages due to planned maintenance are generally limited to 1 hour or less.

Redundancy

In order to improve availability and redundancy it is possible to order two seperate Open Peering Metro Wavelengths which follow different and non-overlapping physical metro routes. As it is very improbable that two fiber routes are damaged or under maintenance at the same, this stongly reduces the chance on planned or unplanned outages. Further a second Metro Wave of course doubles the available capacity.

Pricing

Metro Wavelength

* The listed Off-Net prices are stricty indicational.

Lasers suitable for Metro Wavelength

* The listed Off-Net prices are stricty indicational.

Conditions

Datacenters: On-Park, On-Net, Near-Net, Off-Net

The Metro Wavelength products of Open Peering are available on/between practically all neutral datacenters in and around Amsterdam:

Please contact us for requests on details of links between specific Off-Net datacenter as exact prices depend on the exact datacenter.

For Near-Net (and Off-Net) wavelengths where one end of the link ends in one of the On-Park datacenters (Nikhef, SARA, Telecity1), please also contact us as well, as lower pricing might then apply.

Cable type and connector

Metro Wavelengths are based on single mode optical fiber (with 8-10/125 µm core/cladding radius) with dual (duplex) SC/PC connectors.

Does not include patchcable

The demarcation point of the service is the port on the Open Peering patchpanel in each datacenter. After an order is placed with Open Peering, the patchpanel port ID's will be assigned in the order confirmation notice. With those port ID's the customer can order patchcables from its equipment to the Open Peering patchpanel port with the datacenter directly.

Lighting the wave with lasers

The wavelength provided by Open Peering is 'dark'. The customer will need to light up the wave using lasers (SFP or GBIC) in his equipment at the right wavelength color (compliant with the ITU-T G.694.2 CWDM grid and compatible with the 1000BASE-X standard as specified in IEEE 802.3z) and with enough power budget (in dB or decibel). The exact color and the required laser power budget for a link will be communicated by Open Peering in the order conformation.

Delivery time

If wavelength capacity is available on the ordered route, delivery time is max 10 working days. If capacity is not available, delivery can delayed upto 8 weeks. Please reserve some time (a few days) after this order delivery to jointly thoroughly check on both sides if the connection is 100% okay before taking it into production.