Passive Wave Primer

Tue Oct 13 19:11:24 UTC 2020

On 10/13/20 8:27 AM, Rod Beck wrote:
> Looking for a tutorial on passive waves. How it works. Pros and cons. .

If you're talking about what I think you are, the term the folks who 
make the transport gear seem to use is "spectrum" as in you (as service 
provider) sell your customer some portion of the WDM transport spectrum. 
  It typically comes in 50GHz increments or sometimes 100GHz 
corresponding to the standard ITU channel system but not always.

To the service provider, this is then an "alien wave" in that they have 
essentially no control or visibility into it other than light shows up, 
and they're responsible for getting it to the other end of the path with 
acceptable path characteristics.

I have yet to find a service provider that is actually willing to sell 
this even when they have it in their service offering catalog.  The 
difficulties of coordinating everything with the customer are so extreme 
that it seems to usually make sense to either lease the customer dark 
fiber or capitalize the transponders needed to carry it as a managed 
wave on the provider's transport system.  Might make sense if you 
literally want half the spectrum on a long-haul span or something.

-- 
Brandon Martin