We have several buildings and a couple data centers spread around the city and interconnected via dark fiber. It's a very simple setup - no ROADM, no real ring, no extended layer-2 or layer-3 via the optical gear.
Pretty much we just mux/demux a channel for each building so that each building sees the two data centers directly even though the fiber span may wind through a couple buildings along the way. In some cases, the distance is short enough to use colored optics in the network gear, but mostly the distances are just long enough to warrant transponder cards.
All that being said, a lot of the gear is approaching end of life (support in some cases). I'm not an optical guru but I can muddle my way through with Cisco ONS and I'm aware that Ciena and Fujitsu also have similar products. We really don't have budget for a large optical refresh effort. However, we've saved some money here and there in the routing/switching arena by leveraging Arista and even Cumulus. I'm wondering if there are smaller players in the optical arena that have a good quality/price value?
Again, we don't need sophisticated features... we primarily have 2-to-4 1Gb and 10Gb ports required per site, then we mux those onto a wavelength and extend it to the two data centers. Most buildings are set up the same way, each on a different wavelength so the don't even see each other... only the data centers.
If you guys know of any optical gear that you can vouch for (and which costs less than a small house), we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks
CWDM option might be your best bet here.
If you need more channels and you want to go to DWDM then check out Ekinops
Great product and they don't charge as much as the other guys
We use and love Infinera XTG Muxes for our P2P extensions off the main optical core. They have a line of manageable 8 channel DWDM passive mux that you can get basic up down traps and optical information about each channel. You can use grey market or OAM tuned ten gig transponders in your switches or routers and patch into the mux. There is an option to add an amp if distances are too great. About 6K for a pair of the muxes and tuned optics are grey market so your price will vary based on the vender you purchase from. We use Precision for the grey market optics and have been very pleased with the price vs's value and support.
Wow... a lot of suggestions and very quickly too. CWDM may not be an option because some of the spans are just out of range, but I'm going to look at it for the short spans.
Thanks for all the feedback, folks. (I'll contact some of you off-board)
I've used Adva passive DWDM MUX's and colored FlexOptix DWDM 10G optics. It
worked very well with zero issues. I haven't personally used MUX's from fs.com but I've had colleagues use them and caution against them due to the
quality.
I've set a few people up with FS.com, and my $employer uses then for a lot
of DWDM without issue.
as another fs.com user of cwdm muxes... yes, in the limited sample I have
they work for me...
you ought to be able to pair the CWDM muxes like: http://www.fs.com/products/42972.html
with their 80km optics and get pretty far along... a 'city' solution
shouldn't really need more than 80k, right?
I've set a few people up with FS.com, and my $employer uses then for a lot
of DWDM without issue.
as another fs.com user of cwdm muxes... yes, in the limited sample I have
they work for me...
you ought to be able to pair the CWDM muxes like: http://www.fs.com/products/42972.html
with their 80km optics and get pretty far along... a 'city' solution
shouldn't really need more than 80k, right?
