So I've got this 2.5gig wave, what do I do with it?

Thu Apr 16 23:34:02 UTC 2009

Due to the vagaries of telecom pricing, I've ended up with a 2.5gig 
wavelength service between two locations when what I really wanted was a 
gig-e or two.

I'm really not sure if this is a "transparent" wave service or not... 
the carrier is using gear from Ciena to hand it off to us and they seem 
to be big on transparent waves, so maybe it is, but nobody seems to be 
able to say for sure.

So, how can I best make use of this beast in my ethernet-centered world? 

1- Since it doesn't cost me anything, I'm going to try to send a 
gigabit LX signal and see what happens. The handoff from the carrier to 
me seems to be a plain 1310 type of signal... Light goes on, light goes 
off, maybe the carrier's gear doesn't care that it's not modulating 
"fast enough" and I'll get lucky?

2- MRV's EM2009-GM2 card takes 2xGE and spits out a 2.5G signal
of some sort. However they won't guarantee me that it'll work when 
talking to the Ciana card the carrier is using. I should probably 
inquire about their return policy and go for it.
The SFPs they spec on the trunk side are the same as those for OC48,
so as long as my wave is transparent and not expecting OC48 framing I'm 
thinking this would work.

3- I can buy an OC48 box and mux some GE onto it with GFP/VCAT. 
Expensive and overcomplicated since I don't need anything but ethernet.

Anyone have some clue for me? I'm starting to wish we'd just jumped to 
10G waves since at least there it's clear how to interop with 10gig 
ethernet.

-Will Orton
will at loopfree.net