The technology, DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing), will “create additional capacity and redundancy in the network’s backbone,” according to a LeaseWeb statement.
The new technology will allow the company’s clients flexibility, as many of them “want to be able to grow quickly when they need to,” Con Zwinkels, LeaseWeb’s managing director, said in a statement.
“It does not make any difference whether these are growth needs of corporate enterprises, or Internet startups with growth needs in the area of streaming hosting,” Zwinkels said.
“In order to be able to quickly meet those needs on an ad hoc basis, our philosophy is that we always maintain twice as much bandwidth capacity in our network as our clients use. We are currently experiencing strong growth in bandwidth demand. DWDM will allow us to meet this demand for bandwidth at all times.”
DWDM intensifies the use of underground optical fiber links by bundling different colors of light through color lasers. Instead of one color or 10 gigabit ethernet, DWDM technology makes it possible to combine up to 40 colors or 400 gigabit ethernet on the existing optical fiber.
The technology will provide LeaseWeb’s optical fiber infrastructure with an additional capacity starting at 400 gigabits per second to maximum of 1,200 gbps.
“DWDM is a fairly expensive technology,” said Bastiaan Spandaw, network architect for LeaseWeb. “But it significantly improves the scalability of our network instead of continuously having to add new cables.”
LeaseWeb announced that it would purchase the MRV Communications Inc.—manufactured technology through Dutch distributor Dataman International.