As demands for bandwidth accelerate, network operators across industries will feel the pinch of fiber constraints with increasing frequency. Here are a few easy ways to get ahead of the curve and increase your fiber capacity.
1. Upgrade Your Uplinks
The most common challenge for network operators comes at the uplink from local switches to an aggregation switch. As local ports become oversubscribed, significant bottlenecks can develop and data transmission can slow significantly.
For networks build on a modular blade-and-chassis architecture, the best solution can be a line card upgrade. For example, a fully populated switch with 1G/10G local ports will require at least 40G (if not 100G) uplink ports to ensure consistently smooth data transmission. While these OEM line cards may be expensive, replacement requires minimal downtime and no additional fiber investment.
2. Double Efficiency with Single Fiber
If you need to add more links but have no room in the budget for laying or leasing new fiber, single fiber (a.k.a., bi-directional or bi-di) transceivers can help.
These transceivers offer full-duplex 1G or 10G transmission over a single strand of fiber, effectively doubling your available bandwidth over distances up to 80km (10G) or 120km (1G). Since these transceivers use the same standards-based form factors as traditional dual fiber transceivers (e.g., SFP/SFP+, XFP, and more) and can be deployed in all the same switches, switching over to bi-di optics is a painless way to reap huge fiber capacity benefits.
3. The Power of Passives
Whether you’re experiencing capacity constraints in either your transport network or a single building or campus, a passive network design may solve your problems. Passive filters use either coarse (CWDM) or dense (DWDM) wave division multiplexing to add new links off of a common fiber link. This high capacity makes these a great solution if you anticipate steady growth in bandwidth; CWDM passives enable you to add 8 additional links, while DWDM passives have the capacity for up to 40 links. While standard configurations will suit most needs, these filters are fully customizable to any channel plan or form factor package your network requires. The diagram below shows a simple point-to-point passive network architecture:
While this solution can require some additional planning and design upfront, there are immediate operational benefits. Their simple passive design means no power consumption, and fewer moving parts than active systems lower costs and improve reliability.
Want to learn more about how to increase your fiber capacity? Contact Champion ONE today.
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