Farice Boosts Submarine and Terrestrial Connectivity for Iceland’s Growing Data Center Industry Using Ciena’s GeoMesh Network Solution
Ciena®
Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, and Farice, the main
provider of international capacity from Iceland to mainland Europe, have
jointly announced an upgrade to the submarine cable system DANICE,
connecting Iceland with Denmark. The new upgrade, due to become
operational in early 2013, will utilize Ciena’s 40G coherent optical
transport technology to significantly increase the total capacity of the
submarine cable, providing sufficient bandwidth to support the rapidly
growing Icelandic data center industry. Leveraging Ciena’s unique GeoMesh
networking solution, Farice has optimized its cable landing station
design allowing for seamless connectivity between their submarine and
terrestrial networks leading to savings in operation and capital
expenditures, as well as reduced latency.
Key Facts:
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Farice selected Ciena’s 6500
Packet-Optical Platform for deployment on its 2,295 km long DANICE
submarine cable system providing high-bandwidth connectivity between
Landeyjar, Iceland and Blaabjerg, Denmark. The network will initially
utilize Ciena’s 40G coherent transport technology, with ultra-long
distance 100G wavelengths (based on the WaveLogic
3 coherent optical processors) to be deployed in 2013.
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With an increasing number of foreign enterprises and operators turning
to Iceland with their data center investments – in search of low
cooling costs and renewable energy sources – the country’s submarine
cable system with direct connection to the European continent was
running out of available bandwidth. Scalable to 8.8 Tb/s of total
capacity on a single fiber, Farice’s upgraded submarine cable will
address this capacity crunch, paving the way to further growth of
Iceland’s storage and data center market. The upgraded DANICE
submarine cable consists of four fiber pairs giving a maximum capacity
of 35.2 Tb/s.
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The network upgrade will be managed by Ciena’s OneControl
Unified Management System, providing Farice’s Network Operations
Center (NOC) with multi-layer service management thus enabling rapid
service deployment, accurate resource utilization tracking and network
hotspot identification, resulting in efficient use of critical network
assets and bandwidth optimization.
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In addition to upgrading one of two submarine cables, the deployment
also includes a unique GeoMesh network solution, which incorporates
optical bypass technology to significantly simplify the end-to-end
network design from the cable landing station in the south of Iceland
to Farice’s Points of Presence (PoP) in downtown Reykjavík and
Keflavik Airport. The traditional approach is to add regenerators at
the cable landing station, which adds increased latency, cost, and
complexity. Ciena’s GeoMesh network solution incorporates an
all-optical network design to connect submarine and terrestrial
segments into a single seamless link, with high-capacity optical
signals carried as foreign wavelengths over the existing terrestrial
backhaul network.
Executive Comments:
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“Thanks to its well educated workforce and accessibility to affordable
and sustainable power, Iceland is truly uniquely positioned to serve
Europe’s growing data center market. With this opportunity, however,
also comes the need of a connectivity solution that will provide
unmatched reliability, scalability, and robustness. Ciena’s technology
selected for the end-to-end network upgrade offers all these
attributes and has been proven in numerous submarine and terrestrial
deployments around the world. Together with the original FARICE-1
system connecting Iceland and the Faeroe Islands to Scotland, for
years to come the newly upgraded DANICE cable will enable us to better
serve the needs of both our data center customers, as well as our
traditional telecommunications customers.”
- Örn Jónsson,
Chief Technical Officer /CTO at Farice
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“Iceland’s cool climate, coupled with an abundance of cost-effective
green and renewable energy sources, makes it an ideal place for
European enterprises’ secondary data centers. Because of its scarce
supply, network connectivity can be a significant limitation to the
country’s ambition of becoming a major force in the data center world.
Leveraging Ciena’s innovative GeoMesh network solution, Farice’s
latest cable upgrade will not only provide enough bandwidth to meet
the operator’s needs today, but also allow it to grow as customer
demand increases. As such, the deployment will be a true poster child
for the scalability and flexibility that Ciena’s OPn
network architecture is all about.”
- John-Paul Hemingway,
Vice President and General Manager, Ciena EMEA
Supporting resources:
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White Paper: Consolidated
Metro Cable Landing Stations
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Data Sheet: 6500
Packet-Optical Platform
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Application Note: Enabling
a bigger and smarter network with WaveLogic 3
About Farice
Farice operates a city to city network in five European countries. The
network is optimized for delivery wholesale capacity to service
providers, content providers, cloud service providers and data center
customers. Further information about Farice and its services can be
found by visiting www.farice.is.
About Ciena
Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide
to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally
change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep
expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software
automation to deliver solutions in alignment with OPn, its
approach for building open next-generation networks. We enable a
high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and
adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to
coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified,
virtualized environment. We routinely post recent news, financial
results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on
our website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.
Note to Ciena Investors
Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain
forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and
assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are
based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and
Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or
implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business,
which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-K,
which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on
December 21, 2012. Forward-looking statements include statements
regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies
regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such
as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend,"
"may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no
obligation to update the information included in this press release,
whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.