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100G ethernet gets wholesalers ready to sell 10G ethernet ports
31 August 2012
View from the Top: Henrik Liungman of Verizon Global Wholesale explains why 100 gigabit ethernet technology is the means by which wholesale operators will serve the growing bandwidth demands of customer operators and their enterprise end users
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Henrik Liungman: It’s cost effective to consolidate backbone
core traffic onto a single 100G channel
In 2009 Verizon made a giant leap by upgrading a portion of its European network to 100 gigabit ethernet. While 100G is in its infancy, it is clear that bandwidth-intensive services such as telepresence and cloud computing are increasing in uptake, and the market is poised for marked consumption growth. That scale of capacity is not something that can be put in place overnight and Verizon has committed to a sustained investment plan to roll out the technology globally.
We have a huge focus on ethernet and our investment plan will grow that business substantially. But why go so far as 100 gigabit ethernet today when the demand has not yet crystallised? The obvious answer is the efficiency and economies of scale that 100 gigabit delivers. As the adoption of advanced applications grows, bandwidth demand is following the same path.
The motivation is to support wholesale operator customers in serving their customers’ future demands. The switch from TDM to ethernet makes it necessary to take bigger steps to make the network meet both current and future requirements.
Few other global communications providers have made such a large step. We’ve found it’s cost effective to consolidate backbone core traffic onto a single 100G channel as opposed to multiple 10G channels. The benefits are not only in increased capacity, but also in improved performance as well as helping meet unforecast customer demand.
We want to stay ahead of the curve — especially on those routes where we have the most demand. The reason for that is the amount of bandwidth they will need to carry in support of new applications and services in the cloud, in security and unified communications. It’s exactly those services that are driving us to do this.
Another element that may be further out is carrier ethernet replacing MPLS, which will result in even greater requirements for bandwidth. CIOs will say they want all their applications on one IP network. That’s a vision today — but in three or four years there will be more of a unified backbone on top of carrier ethernet.
As a provider of wholesale capacity, Verizon needs to have more to offer than the operators it sells to. Having a 100 gigabit network means you are able to standardise on 10 gigabit port resale. It will help you make the commercial step to productise 10 gigabit ethernet. If you don’t have 100 gigabit ethernet it is hard to sell 10 gigabit because you are reselling the bulk of your capacity. It’s a technical evolution for us and a step we feel we needed to make to be at the forefront. The knock-on effect will be that 10 gigabit ports become the one-gigabit ports of today.
In 2011 Verizon deployed the first 100G ethernet in Europe by connecting Frankfurt and Paris. But there are differences in requirements from region to region. In Europe there is still a lot of bandwidth on TDM and capacity with local incumbents, whereas in Asia there is a lot of sea transport. Both have different market requirements than those in the US.
The requirement for 100 gigabit ethernet in Asia will not be as large as in Europe or the US. The reason for that is there is a lot of traffic from China to the US or Japan to the US but not much intra-regional traffic. In Europe, by contrast, the four major economies of Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK hold maybe 80% of the value.
We are going to see the main requirements for 100G ethernet between the major data centres. There will be big demand in those core data centre locations.
Henrik Liungman is area vice president of international marketing at Verizon Global Wholesale