3 things you need to know about dark fiber

What is dark fiber?

Dark Fiber is, essentially, optical fiber infrastructure that is not in use. In the beginning, many companies had the tendency to future-proof their fiber optic networks by installing more cabling than what was actually needed for their current requirements, just to be prepared in case they will face an exponential data growth. Because of this overestimation and the fact that the cost is mostly in digging (the actual cost of the cable is less than 10% of the project), companies usually buried as much as cable possible.

Many fiber optic networks are not used at their fullest capacities. Therefore, dark fibers were created to fully utilize this extra capacity.

The term ‘Dark Fiber’ has now evolved to encompass the practice of leasing ‘dark’ fiber optic cables from network providers and operators. A client will lease unused strands of ‘dark’ fiber optic cable to create their own privately-operated optical fiber network rather than just leasing bandwidth. The dark fiber network is separate from the main network and is controlled by the client rather than the network provider.

Dark fiber networks can be set up in a variety of ways, including dark fiber rings, point to point or point-to-multipoint configurations. With  dark fiber, a client can expect to get high levels of performance, a highly secure network and superfast speeds.

Who might be in need of dark fiber?

Companies or organizations, with a need of large data transport, control over network infrastructure and high data confidentiality requirement, are most likely to benefit from adopting dark fiber. Meanwhile, leasing dark fiber and powering it with owned transport equipment would also lower CAPEX and OPEX. So, for those companies that are emerging or with a controlled budget, dark fiber would also be an economical option.

Generally speaking, the potential customer of dark fiber could be categorized as follows.

a. ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers).

b. CLECs (competitive local-exchange carriers).

c. Data transport carriers.

d. Tower-owners and wireless carriers.

e. Data center vendors for interconnection or data mirroring needs.

What kind of equipment is required for dark fiber?

With the leased dark fiber, you still need your own transport equipment to power it up, which is also called last mile infrastructure. However, there is no standard formula of equipment, as it depends on distance, data throughput and the data protocols that need to be supported(e.g. Ethernet, Fibre Channel, ONT).

For instance, for short distance links (less than 60km in 10Gbps per DWDM channel), all you need is probably transmission system at the end of the link. As for long distance, you might also need amplifier and power generation equipment. Besides, you also need Optical Network Monitoring Systems (ONMS) to monitor the performance of the transmission system and optical infrastructure. ONMS consists of an OTDR and switches to switch the OTDR signal between multiple fibers.

Building a network, especially during initial implementation, is not an easy job. The most efficient way is to consult an experienced system provider. This way you can save time and make sure your network is suitable for your current requirements, as well as flexible for future business needs.

Why not contacting Telecom Easy? We have helped our customer save time and money in sourcing, maintaining, repairing and decommissioning telecommunication and networking equipment, since 2006. Our comprehensive industrial solution is designed to serve customers in various business sectors, for example MNO, ISP, data center, satellite communication and etc.