Optical transport has traditionally served static applications. That’s no longer the case. Today’s customers want, and communications service providers need to deliver, services that can be turned up fast and on an as-needed basis. That means networks need to be more elastic and automated, and that optical networks require the capacity to scale up quickly. To enable that, Nokia has enhanced its 1830 Photonic Service Switches.

These switches support DWDM P-OTN transport and can address such applications and services as broadband backhaul, carrier Ethernet, data center interconnect, metro and long-haul transport, multicast video, and wavelength services. Control can be handled via distributed GMPLS and centralized software-defined networking.

What’s new is that Nokia has quadrupled the optical fiber capacity of this product line to more than 70 terabits per second, and doubled its wavelength capacities and wavelengths per fiber. As a result, the 1830 PSS family of switches, which are based on the Photonic Service Engine version 2 from Nokia Bell Labs, allow service providers to deliver 100G transport services.

“Service providers are under tremendous pressure to scale their networks to meet the demands of large enterprises, cloud operators and Internet content providers for high-capacity, on-demand services – all while maintaining profitability by lowering cost per bit,” as Next Generation Communications Senior Editor Peter Bernstein explained in this recent article. “And, while over the past five years, 100G coherent DWDM has been the key innovation in scaling optical transport networks, most users have interfaced to these networks at 10G. This is no longer sufficient for a variety of reasons.”

That said, communications service providers need more efficiency and scale to enable them to cost effectively deliver 100G transport services, as Kyle Hollasch, head of optical marketing for Nokia, told Bernstein. Specifically, that will require better wavelengths, more efficient wavelengths, and more wavelengths, he added.

CSP adoption of 100G Ethernet is forecast to drive growth of core IP/MPLS routers to $3.6 billion by 2020, according to Ovum analyst Ron Kline.