Astound Business Solutions debuts 400G wavelength service

Also, the service provider is using Ciena’s flexible 6500 ROADM photonic layer for resiliency and scalability and its Navigator Network Control Suite (Navigator NCS) for multi-layer visibility and simplified network management. 

Astound can accelerate its network build by leveraging Navigator’s PlannerPlus and Emulation Cloud, which provide online network planning and design tools and an open environment for integration testing with operational support systems. 

“This enables us to deploy the right coherent technology for any distance at the lowest power and cost—whether that’s Ciena’s WL5e for longer-reach links or its WL5n for shorter ones,” said Knorr. “And, thanks to Navigator NCS, we can do the calculations well before any hardware is deployed.”

While Astound works with multiple vendors on its network, the Ciena platform’s flexibility ensures it has the right solutions for the right customers. 

“Ciena has the best-in-class solution for 400G, which has a good path to go to 800 G,” Knorr said. “For the customers that need it, that’s going to be the next step, so it’s a very scalable solution.”  

To ensure the Ciena platform could deliver customers 400G wavelength services, Astound was to deploy and initially leverage the network platform for its own internal needs. 

Knorr said this helped test the platform. “The first step was deploying the platform in our networks,” he said. “It’s much better for us to be the first deployment than a customer, and it went smoothly.”

Looking forward, Astound will work with its internal team on how to leverage the Ciena platform. “There will be a continuing broadening education across our teams–including sales engineering on the capabilities of the platform, but we have what we need to customers deploy today.” 

Scaling data centers’ bandwidth

Having already established a presence in 100 data centers, Astound sees potential to grow its wavelength service set to this segment. 

Knorr said that the data center market opportunity continues to grow. 

“A lot of the largest players in that market deploy a lot of their infrastructure and we support them where it makes sense,” he said. 

Within the data center market, the growth of new and existing trans-ocean submarine cables is another opportunity for Astound. The provider can be a connection point to data center facilities from cable landing stations and other hubs.   

“Another use for 400G is also trans-ocean cables,” Knorr said. “We can provide landside connectivity for cables on the West Coast and get connectivity from the beach to the data centers and distribution across the country.” 

Additionally, Astound provides connectivity between data centers using wavelengths and, in some cases, dark fiber. 

“When we provide services for data center providers, it takes the form of optical connections, or with larger hyperscalers, it takes the form of dark fiber,” Knorr said. “They are often deploying this type of technology on this dark fiber, but it makes sense for their scalability needs to deploy equipment themselves, and that’s what our core focus is to provide the right solution for the customers’ needs.” 

Dark fiber complement

As an aggressive cable and fiber overbuilder, Astound also offers dark fiber services to its business and data center customers. 

Dark fiber is fiber infrastructure not yet “lit” or used by a service provider or an end-user customer. A dark fiber lease requires the customer rather than the service provider to maintain and operate the equipment needed to “light” the fiber and use it for Internet access and communications.

Like its 400G service, Astound works with every customer to see if dark fiber fits their needs. The provider takes a consultative approach to walk through the different options. 

“We consider dark fiber a core product,” Knorr said. “There are customers where dark fiber is the right answer and other customers where it is not a good answer.”

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