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FiberLight, LLC, a fiber-optic network service provider in the U.S. Southeast, will use packet switches from Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) in new mobile backhaul networks the service provider is building for two major U.S. wireless operators. Ciena says the new mobile backhaul networks will connect more than 450 cell towers with fiber to support 100 Mbps to each tower. FiberLight will have the ability to scale these connections to 1 Gbps, Ciena adds.

FiberLight provides a range of network services via a 500,000 fiber-mile network across Georgia, Texas, Florida, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. In the first of the two expansion projects, FiberLight will build a dedicated fiber-based mobile backhaul network in West Texas for what Ciena described as “a top tier LTE wireless provider.” The 3000 miles of new fiber-optic network infrastructure will feature Ciena’s 3900 family of packet networking systems at the network edge.

The second project, for a different customer, will see new infrastructure that will stretch across Texas, Washington, Maryland, and Florida. The network will connect 200 cell towers with six major aggregation sites.

Ciena will supply its 5410 and 5150 Service Aggregation Switches and 3930, 3931 and 3960 Service Delivery Switches for the deployments. FiberLight plans to use the switches’ subtending G.8032 Ethernet ring support to increase network scalability and reliability. The service provider also will leverage Ciena’s management system to ease service activation and ensure the health of the network. Finally, it also will receive consultation, maintenance, and support via Ciena Specialist Services.

The deployment will have three phases, the last of which should be completed by the end of 2012.

“By deploying Ciena’s packet networking infrastructure at the vast majority of towers we serve, we are enabling our customers to quickly scale from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps per tower, eliminate bandwidth restrictions, and reduce the potential for data bottlenecks,” said Andrew Stravelli, vice president, network engineering at FiberLight, via a Ciena press release. “Additionally, the automation, remote provisioning, and reporting features provided by Ciena’s management solution allows us to proactively monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot our customers’ networks. Our end customers can then use the secure, cloud-based portal to confirm that we are meeting SLA requirements.”

RAD Data Communications says it will unveil a fully functional Ethernet network interface device (NID) in an SFP form factor Ethernet Network Interface Device (NID) at Ethernet Expo Americas in early November. The Micro Network Interface Device (MiNID) plugs into the SFP cage of any manufacturer’s platform, giving it Carrier Ethernet demarcation and service-level agreement (SLA) verification capabilities.

RAD says the new device will more easily enable service providers, wholesale carriers, and mobile operators to receive real-time network and performance reports with per-Class of Service SLA definition.

The MiNID can handle up to 1 Gbps of Ethernet traffic and features per-port and per-flow monitoring capabilities, including Ethernet OAM and loopbacks. It can be remotely managed independently from its hosting device or, alternatively, it can be integrated with its hosting device to enable them to act together and appear as a single platform.

“The ability to seamlessly integrate RAD’s MiNID SFP into a hosting device offers huge savings for carriers and operators who would otherwise have to rely on multi-box deployments,” notes Yacov Cazes, RAD director of business development. “This new product is suitable for base stations, especially small cells where size and power are issues, as well as switches or routers that are not equipped for Carrier Ethernet in order to furnish them with Carrier Ethernet capabilities. The MiNID can also be inserted into a wholesale provider device to add end-to-end service monitoring and control.”

“Today, service providers and enterprises demand strict adherence to performance guarantees for Ethernet services,” said Ron Kline, principal analyst for network infrastructure at Ovum. “Plug-and-play performance monitoring and service management capabilities without ripping and replacing equipment will certainly get network operators’ attention.”

“We anticipate a high degree of interest among service providers in a solution such as the MiNID,” agreed Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research. “There is a strong business case to be made for this approach, particularly in applications such as small cells, virtual private networks, and the combination of service provider and wholesale provider network termination units.”

Huawei says that Gansu Administration of Radio, Film and Television has selected the systems provider to deploy the country’s first network that will combine 100-Gbps coherent technology with Optical Transport Network (OTN) capabilities.

The administration, which oversees radio, film, and television production and provision in Gansu province, will use the Huawei technology to upgrade its current SDH-based provincial backbone fiber-optic network to better support such services as video on demand, high-definition video, and broadband. The administration expects the new network’s use of coherent 100G technology, OTN, and an automatically switched optical network (ASON) architecture, will meet its requirements for the next five years. The network deployment will comply with the specifications of the Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) project of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), Huawei adds

Huawei says the systems on the new infrastructure will support 8 Tbps per fiber while supporting a mix of 10G/40G/100G wavelengths. The intelligent ASON control plane will support resilient protection against multiple fiber cuts and guarantee high network reliability, the company adds. The control plane also will support a variety of service classes.

Cisco Systems Inc says it has completed a 100G technology test with the North West branch of MegaFon, one of the three largest mobile operators in Russia. Cisco and MegaFon specialists successfully tested data transmission at the rate of 100 Gbps in an existing MegaFon DWDM network.

During the testing Cisco 100G platforms  were successfully incorporated in fiber-optic networks based on other vendors’ technologies. Cisco says the results prove that its 100G products are compatible with different manufacturers’ products, can be effectively used for multiple purposes, feature simplicity of configuration and usage, and prevent the necessity of deploying guard bands.

The project was aimed at testing the effectiveness and interworking of Cisco 100G transponders, Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers and the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Transport Platform (MSTP) at the distances of 140 and 384 km (87 and 239 miles). In addition, the 100G equipment was tested over dark fiber at 60 and 120 km (37 and 74 miles).

Cisco ASR 9000 Series routers were used as the network core, as they had been designed as the foundational baseline for next-generation Carrier Ethernet networks.

The 100G services were supported by Cisco DWDM transponders tuned to 192.6 GHz (1556.55 nm). The transponders can operate at a distance well in excess of 2,000 km (1,243 miles) without signal regeneration, and they feature high performance and port density, thus enabling 100G technologies in networks of any complexity, Cisco asserts.

All parameters of the DWDM network were configured automatically by the smart-management subsystem and optical channel power control tools integrated in the Cisco ONS 15454 MSTP. During the test the traffic was transferred at 100 Gbps without failure and degradation of existing 10-Gbps services, showing investment protection on the installed network and existing fiber plant.

"Cisco offers innovative solutions for next-generation DWDM networks, opening new opportunities for service providers,” said Sergey Semenov, CTO, North West Branch, MegaFon. “The testing proved that Cisco products show high performance over DWDM network, as well as over ‘dark fiber,’ providing versatility and flexibility in implementation. Besides, the 100G services are compatible with existing services, avoiding the necessity of guard bands. Thus, the operator can maximize the potentiality of network bandwidth.”