[c-nsp] Dark Fibre Termination

[Bill Wichers]

> Dear All,
>
>
> Is it possible to terminate dark fibre without any CWDM or DWDM MUXes ?
> I have a requirement to terminate the dark fibre directly on a switch
> port.
>
> Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Absolutely! The world of fiber optic networks did not always have WDM gear!

All you need is a suitable optoelectronic interface, usually a GBIC, SONET
line card, etc. As long as you only plan to run one service on your dark
fiber you don't need any WDM equipment to use it. You will need to be sure
that the electronics you use for the link have sufficient reach with the
specific fiber you will be using. If you're only running gigabit Ethernet
or something OC12 or smaller, then you usually only need to worry about
link margin (loss in dB, which is easy to determine). If you're running
10gig Ethernet, OC192, or sometimes OC48 then you need to think about
dispersion on the link as well.

     -Bill

*****************************
Waveform Technology
Systems Engineer