Irish Gov't Invests In Color-Coded Fiber Optics 129
c0mpliant writes "The Irish government has invested a further €5 million, after already having invested €5 million one year ago, in a new system of fiber optics which heralds an era of virtualization of fiber networks, using color coding to enable multiple fiber providers to serve businesses and homes, often on a single strand of fiber. The technology, which has already sparked interest from companies such as BT and IBM, is already in its first phase and boasts an impressive 2.5 terabytes capacity, double the capacity of the London phone system. The company behind the technology, Intune Technology, is comprised of a group of ex-UCD photonics researchers and has been around since 1999 and are based in Dublin. The project is set to be completed by 2020."
5 millions for color coding? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, that and the first €5m leave them needing only another €6.7m to supply a full truecolour selection.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Ireland is soon going to be a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY......
Let's see......pissing in the kitchen sink, fucking sheep and blowing each other up. Sounds like Ireland hit 3rd world status 100 years ago.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
The same way America has turned into a 3rd world country? Oooh, scary.
2.5 terabytes capacity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, my hard drive can store almost that much already.
Re:2.5 terabytes capacity? (Score:4, Funny)
Meh, my hard drive can store almost that much already.
Indeed
All you need now is a pigeon to send the data.
Eat that, you drunk handless dancers.
Re: (Score:2)
double the capacity of the London phone system.
How much is it in Libraries of Congress?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming those 3 loops in the picture are 300 km per east-west leg (the max width of Ireland is 280km) including the north-south parts of the loop, the total fiber length is 6 * 300km = 1800km = 1800000m. The speed of light in fiber is approximately 200e6 m/s vs. 300e6 m/s for a vacuum. That makes the total fiber 'length' about 9ms. At 2.5 TB/s, all of the fiber only contains about 22.5GB at any one instant.
Re: (Score:1)
Meh, my hard drive can store almost that much already.
You're kidding right? Obviously the writer meant that there is 2.5TB/second capacity. We are not talking about storage, we are talking about bandwidth. No one has 2.5TB/second bandwidth in use right now.
He most certainly is. But the summary does not say TB/s, just Terabytes. One would expect a "nerd news" website to watch out for this kind of mistake.
But then again, typos, dupes, slashvertisements, and daily "not news", who am I kidding...
About time (Score:3, Interesting)
It really is about time the irish government invested in improving connectivity. we are so far behind the average we may aswell be hand delivering packets.
Maybe now i can get an affordable internet connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
UPC are in the process of rolling out fiber across Dublin. The time-lines are similar to Blizzard expansions (soon) but last I heard they were doing Dun Laoghaire. I recently got UPC TV into my gaff, and it came with one of them new-fangled wall connections with TV and fiber internet outputs. I had called them about a year ago when I moved to the area asking about internet (ultimately went went with BT (now vodafone)) but at the time they said my area was on the list but they didn't know when. Hopefully tha
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
Why hand-carry when you can just use the protocols of pigeon-carried-ip?
Good throughput, albeit a bit high in packet-loss and poor latency.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html [faqs.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Don't feel too bad, in the U.S. the government 'invested' in improving connectivity but didn't require any actual results from the open ended grant, so we got nothing.
Terminology (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume that by 'colour coding' what the summary actually means is Frequency Division Multiplexing, which isn't exactly new.
Reading TFA it looks to me like a situation of "we've 'invented' this amazing technology, give us money". That may be unfair I admit. What IS interesting is the idea of the fibre being shared by competing telcos. Has that been done before?
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Any thoughts?
Only one: never going to happen.
Major telco providers would lobby the hell out of politicians to prevent it. They don't want more competition. Plus they want to protect their investments into existing towers.
It's quaint how you think anybody cares about benefits of consumers.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You sound like a dirty commie socialist to me!
Don't you know that the market will sort everything out and that companies need to compete fiercely with each other, jealously guarding their secrets and infrastructure rather than this wussy "sharing" and "co-operating" to benefit the consumer in the way you suggest? ;-)
Re:Terminology (Score:4, Informative)
Also common is 'virtual' cell networks, where the consumer-facing provider rents cell capacity from an established telco as you suggest. Examples of this are Tesco Mobile and Virgin Mobile, neither of which own or operate any infrastructure, instead piggybacking off other networks and offering their own pricing and service structure.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you would prevent me from starting up a new company and setting up my own towers then, in your 'government is best' world?
If a company spends money to build infrastructure, as long as public funds were not involved, this company has the right to use that infrastructure to compete with others. If public funds were involved, then government can dictate some of the rules and probably insist that the towers are made accessible to some competition at least.
Exclusive licenses to spectrum (Score:2)
So you would prevent me from starting up a new company and setting up my own towers then, in your 'government is best' world?
The U.S. government already does this once the incumbents have bought up all the spectrum.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Painting the roses red?
Re: (Score:2)
All the time. On pretty much any major civil engineering project where you have are going to have large scale free wireless (airports, ports and other large commercial buildings) the normal model would be for the developer to install a fibre optic network then offer to lease bandwidth to the wireless service providers at a small price. That usually results in telcos sharing the same multi-core fibre
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Informative)
What IS interesting is the idea of the fibre being shared by competing telcos. Has that been done before?
Yes, it has. Selling wavelengths in dark fiber is very common, and companies frequently buy part of lines from eachother. Submarine cables are frequently owned by several companies.
On a level closer to the customer there exists a (in Sweden) functional business model where a company owns the line to the customer and creates a market where different ISP's can provide services to the customer. OpenNet is one of more well known providers using this business model in Sweden.
Re: (Score:2)
This is pretty much how the ADSL market works in the UK. BT own almost all of the infrastructure and lease lines to people. Any ISP is free to offer ADSL internet over these lines.
Re: (Score:2)
You have 4 options in the UK
Copper - almost always owned by BT, whoever you buy the service from
Local loop unbundled ISP - Has their own equipment at the exchange and delivers over the same copper ...(rare)
Cable - almost always Virgin Media (they bought all the amalgamated Cable operators ...)
Satellite - NB Sky (The only satellite broadcaster based in the UK) offer broadband ... over Copper using BT's infrastructure
Re: (Score:2)
>>>(in Sweden) functional business model where a company owns the line to the customer and creates a market where different ISP's can provide services to the customer.
>>>
So what happens when you have a major company (like Comcast, Cox, or other cable company) that wants to lease the whole line from 10 megahertz upto 10,000 megahertz to supply their TV, internet, and on-demand services? Where does that leave room for any competing companies?
Re: (Score:2)
Fiber to the premises is almost always an "all or nothing" service. This MAY be why this story is so interesting, that someone is leasing wavelengths to a building. But from the very sketchy info given it sounds more like a typical MAN with updated hardware. They didn't say anything that indicated they were providing last mile termination to this network, only backbone services.
This article from Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] gives a great break down of the costs associated with building out a 100% fiber network (FTTH) and i
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not really in the market for fiber stuff on the high end, so I don't know if people are being shafted by the incumbent vendors and forced to buy more Us of expensive boxes to get this featureset; but their innovation doesn't sound like it is on the optics side...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We lease several wavelengths from Level 3 for parts of our backbone. I don't know if any others are in use on the fiber, but that's not our concern, and we hand off in a communications hut out in the middle of nowhere.
Re: (Score:2)
It's important to note that the govt is extremely unpopular right now, so they tend to sensationalise pretty much everything they do. Apart from that, Ireland is a country of people who don't expect much, so if there's something coming in that's, say, almost as good as London, we go mad for it.
That's my experience, anyway.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FDM, really? Wouldn't you be using CWDM or DWDM (Course/Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) be the right choice with fiber?
Frequency-division multiplexing and wavelength-division multiplexing are the same thing, given that wavelength = speed / frequency.
im Irish (Score:4, Insightful)
and quite happy about this
but people here (mostly USasians :D) need to know that Ireland had the most expensive bank bailout in world per head of population, almost 10x your mess
and probably the most incompetent and corrupt government in western world, who are now running a deficit of 20% of GDP which would make the Greeks look good
and we will be paying for this for many generations :(
this is a coloured lining on a gray cloud :(
Re:im Irish (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
What are you saying? Earlier this year when I was in Dublin everybody was in parties and drinking a lot.. they seemed happy.
After all, you guys make GUINNESS! You should be rich! Flaming geniuses!
Re: (Score:2)
Next time the potato crops go wrong I guess we'll see a lot of Irish immigrating to the US.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
The word you're looking for you drunk leprechaun is American. Who are these US asians? Are they Unified Standard asians?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
FDM... (Score:1)
The article is unclear, probably 'cos the journalist was. By 'colour coding' I'm pretty sure they mean Frequency Division Multiplexing which allows multiple wavelengths to be used on the same fibre. Obviously, since these are optical systems, this effectively means different colours (although often outside the range of human sight, and I don't advise you looking down one!) which is the way practitioners typically talk about it.
FDM has been in use for a long time as a way of hugely expanding the capacity of
Re: (Score:2)
None of the wavelengths used to transmit data (850nm, 1330nm, 1550nm) are visible.
Wavelength-division Multiplexing (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can tell this is just a standard implementation of the well known technology known as wavelength-division multiplexing. And calling it "color coding" makes me, as an Engineer, cringe. I am sure it's nice for Ireland to get a new core network, but how this is news for Slashdot is way beyond me...
Network virtualization is just used as a buzzword here. There is good work being done in the network virtualization field (See for example http://www.geni.net/ [geni.net] and http://www.fp7-federica.eu/ [fp7-federica.eu] but as far as I can tell these guys are not doing anything revolutionary.
Re: (Score:2)
Buzzword is the keyword here. FTA:
“This is also a green technology – it is capable of carrying twice the volume of traffic that London phone systems carry.
Since when do throughput equal green?
Re: (Score:2)
Mod parent up - WDM is the correct term. Probably this is Metro WDM as opposed to the long-haul DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) - and yes, Coarse WDM does exist too.
WDM will also come to fiber to the home deployments eventually (there's a WDM for GPON being trialled in Korea I think).
Gratuitous wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It is very different than the usual OTN style DWDM transport and more like a giant ethernet switch, where every device gets 10Gbit/s uncontented transmit, that can send a packet directly to any other device, regardless of the number of devices in the ring. The number of nodes is only bound by
Powerpoint with details (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Its a ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexor) doing DWDM. In otherwords high speed re-tunable lasers that can be configured for different wavelengths on the fly.
Now all these "colors" are all infrared...at intervals between 1500-1600nm. Its basically been in use on a wide scale for the past 5-7 years.
DWDM (Score:3, Insightful)
They could just talk to Cisco, Juniper, Nortel, or any other major network infra provider and get DWDM (read "extra colors") capability rolled into their switch. It would probably cost 5m Euro, but the tech already exists (and has since the mid 70's).
Re:DWDM (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem I see with this is the fact that certain wavelengths have certain interfering effects with other wavelengths. For example, 660-670nm radiation coupled with 720-740nm IR radiation causes some odd effects, which plants happen to utilize in photosynthesis, but I don't think we've ever tested such effects against the communication of data.
Re: (Score:2)
Bad fashion, I know, but it is called the Emerson Effect. I am not sure if it applies to the blue/UV wavelengths, but I'm conducting horticultural research on that right now. We've already observed this in the red/IR spectrum, and on top of that we've seen that even exposing one leaf to such irradiation, even a lower leaf, causes the entire plant to react almost immediately.
Re: (Score:2)
Neither. I grow landrace strains for genetic preservation for the Dutch.
Re: (Score:2)
The last wholesale price of the lasers ran from about $2.50 to $1,400.00 depending on which color you needed. With plans like this, who gets the cheap lasers?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem I see with this is the fact that certain wavelengths have certain interfering effects with other wavelengths. For example, 660-670nm radiation coupled with 720-740nm IR radiation causes some odd effects, which plants happen to utilize in photosynthesis, but I don't think we've ever tested such effects against the communication of data.
What planet are you living on? Non-linear interaction between frequencies of EM communication has been studied for not just years, but decades. It's well understood. The subject is covered in any decent first-year Electrical Engineering course, and covered in much more detail in any decent course on Signals and Systems. Given linear media, supperposition applies, and there's no interaction. Given non-linear media, you get frequency mixing; with accurate knowledge of the non-linear characteristics, you
Re: (Score:2)
"It's well understood."
Not in the horticultural world, it most certainly is not. You are aware there are more scientific industries than computer science, yes?
Re: (Score:2)
They could just talk to Cisco, Juniper, Nortel, or any other major network infra provider and get DWDM (read "extra colors") capability rolled into their switch.
It's a good thing that their Chief Scientist worked for twelve years at Nortel then, thought it's disappointing to find out that he is not [intunenetworks.com] an ex-UC Davis alumnus as the summary implies (He has a PhD in Photonics from the University of Ulster).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...it's disappointing to find out that he is not an ex-UC Davis alumnus as the summary implies
The summary speaks of "of a group of ex-UCD photonics researchers"; there's more than one UCD on the planet, and this one is probably University College Dublin [www.ucd.ie].
The founders were from UCD, according to the "about Intune" page [intunenetworks.com]. ("Intune was founded in 1999 by two college graduates, John Dunne and Tom Farrell. They were performing research on tunable lasers and their network applications in University College Dublin, Ireland.")
(I hope, for UCD's sake, that their Web designers aren't ex-UCD. Not only do the
Do they mean WDM? (Score:2, Informative)
Intune Networks (...) has developed a technology that can enable a single strand of fibre to move from carrying one signal from one operator to carrying data from 80 telecoms and TV companies all at once."
Do they mean they have "invented" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing [wikipedia.org]? I'm puzzled.
Re: (Score:1)
Actually it appears to be Lambda switching/Optical Cross connects. Lucent sell similar gear and I think the tech was invented at Bell Labs back in the 90s.
Essentially you're switching the path to destination based on it's optical components rather than the encapsulated data - so you pick the destination node(s) by selecting the appropriate colour(s) on a tunable laser and blast the data out effectively switching the data at the optical level without decoding it to electrical signals.
It's very fast and very
Re: (Score:1)
It's Ireland. You know we invented the colour green? Now we can have green internet!
Questions from an optoelectronics geek (Score:2)
What are the wavelengths we're talking about here? Are we working in purely visible range, or are we expanding out to low-range IR and UV? Are we going deeper than that over fiber optic? Can we even potentially push microwaves over fiber optic lines since it is just EM and we're using glass as a conduit? Would the conduit need to be bigger than pencil-sized to accommodate wavelengths of such size?
I could ask questions about this for days. Please give me some information that could cut that time down to a we
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Wavelengths, we're pretty much always talking near-infrared. The most often used wavelength range is the so-called C-band (1530–1565 nm). This is mainly because this is where Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers work, which are necessary to create very long links without repeaters (also this is where the absorption minimum of fibres is). Less common is the L-band 1565-1625 nm. There's also the O and E band this are AFAIK mainly legacy bands which were used at the beginning of fibre optic communications. (Den
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Microwaves are at far too low a frequency for a fibre to act as a wave guide and you wouldn't really want to anyway. You see the visible range is just under one octave, that means that just the optical band plus a tiny bit of the UV band has as much bandwidth as every single frequency below it.
This includes the entire of the radio, microwave, toaster [xkcd.com] (okay, terahertz band) and infrared combined. So how much data do you think can ultimately be pushed down a fibre?
SPAMmers (and the likes) will love it! (Score:2)
It's about time... (Score:2)
they color coded those fiber optic cables! I only have 3 going in my AV receiver and all being black has given me some challenge. Imagine dozens of those each belonging to a different telco - how could they tell them apart without color coding?
PS. Yes, I figured out it was about FDM after reading the summary carefully, still the above were some of the thoughts reading the Title and skimming half the summary... I mean it is not like color-coding fiber optics does not have a specific meaning (http://en.wikip
So, when can Sharks (Score:1)
go for a colour upgrade to their frickin head mounted lasers?
So, when do we get color coded streets ? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is something I've been pondering for a while, why don't we have color coded streets in our biggest cities so that navigation would be easier for us Human Beings ? Human Beings understand colors and places, and can put those two together in their little memories (brains they call them) and can use that information to easily assosiate things with other things, thus remembering for example that Main Street is blue and takes me to the Green Zone, and throught that I have to take the pink road, turn left a
Re: (Score:1)
Congratulations, you are one step closer to the crystal dome and you will have an extra five seconds when we get there!
Divisive (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Divisive (Score:5, Funny)
Another thing for the Catholics & Prods to argue over. Who gets the green wires...
That's not the problem. The problem come when they try to lay an orange wire in a catholic street or a green one in a protestant one.
Re:Divisive (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That's (mostly) northern Ireland ... different country ... ... Those Damn No nothing New York Canadians ....
Re: (Score:2)
Mauve (Score:1, Offtopic)
Don't the mauve wires have more RAM?
Color Coded? (Score:2)
You mean DWDM and CWDM? Thats been around for a decade. I was deploying it in DC in 2003.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but this works using different hues of green.
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
so the irish are asserting that there are financial benefits in adapting this prismatic fibre optic technology?
in other words, there is a pot of gold, at the end of the rainbow?
where did the irish get such an idea?
Re: (Score:2)
To anyone who thinks "WDM"... (Score:2)
Read the actual article! I know that's frowned upon, but it will help.
Color coding = Multiplexing? (Score:2)
Sounds like they are just using different wavelength (wavelength = color) lasers to push multiple signals down the same strand...
This is an old idea and is already in use all over the world.
-- Dave
Irish? (Score:2)
Does that mean that they'll have orange-colored fibers and call them red?
for 10+ years, "multiple lambdas" in use (Score:2)
that is to say, slightly different wavelengths of infrared combined on common fiber pairs. lots of outfits are working on additional lambdas (individual OC48s on one laser/color), present major deployments are 16 and 24 lambdas on one fiber around the world.
the clever thing is that one regenerator repeats them all for another 24+ miles, one color. skinned fibers basically surround one laser for a bunch of turns, and they all get resynched, whatever the color. spooky.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Whiskey was invented to prevent the irish from ruling the world
Re: (Score:2)
Whiskey was invented to prevent the irish from ruling the world
What about Sake? Preventing the Japanese from doing the same?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
oh for God's Sake...
Re: (Score:1)
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
Stop giving everything for a drop of whiskey and maybe you irish can get started on that world domination business.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We've seen your world, yer welcome to it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)