Verizon Business has deployed a technologically advanced network configuration on the trans-Pacific portion of its global network to provide more diverse routes to benefit large-business and government customers.
This network architecture, called meshing, provides a total of five paths for rerouting traffic in the event of a cable cut or other network disruption.
This five-way mesh network design provides significantly enhanced reliability for customer voice and data traffic traversing the Pacific Ocean.
Verizon has ownership in more than 18 cable systems in the Asia-Pacific region including: Japan-US, China-US, Southern Cross (US, New Zealand and Australia) and SEA-ME-WE-4.
Previously, the trans-Pacific transport network used a ring configuration to provide redundant paths.
However, that architecture provided protection against only a single failure within any network ring, and service restoration on the alternate path usually increased the transmission's latency — that is, the time it takes for data sent from its entry point in the network to reach its destination.
Additionally, in the event of a service interruption on two or more segments of the same network system, physical restoration of the cable may not be available until a cable ship is deployed to make repairs.
The new Pacific mesh design provides five paths of 10-gigabit capacity, offering automatic restoration and real-time management of voice and data traffic on the Pacific undersea cable routes on Verizon Business' global network.
The five paths that constitute the mesh provide predictable latency in the event of a network disruption.
The Pacific mesh is currently deployed on two major submarine cable network systems in the Pacific called Japan-US and China-US.
With completion of the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable in the third quarter of this year, the company will expand meshing to include Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
By year-end, Verizon Business will have seven-way mesh diversity deployed on the trans-Pacific network.
The company's Asia Pacific director for network planning, Yali Liu, says there has been a dramatic improvement in network performance since meshing was introduced in the Atlantic.
"We're now extending this same benefit into the Asia-Pacific region, and we will continue to expand the enhanced diversity and reliability of a meshed network to meet the growing demands of our global customers," he says.
In 2006, Verizon Business was the first service provider to deploy six-way diversity for services traversing cable systems in the Atlantic.
The Pacific mesh network gives significant flexibility of routing choices in the region. For example, if there is a natural disaster, like a major earthquake, Verizon Business can automatically reroute customer traffic to an equivalent available network path.
Verizon Business is currently provisioning customers onto the Pacific mesh network.
Its global IP networks span 150 countries across six continents with more than 485,000 route miles and the company is involved in more than 65 submarine cable networks carrying mission-critical traffic for multinational customers worldwide.