Kordia has made a multi-million dollar investment in a fibre optic backhaul network, designed to meet the business demands of internet usage and traffic bandwidths.
Based on the latest DWDM and Ethernet technology supplied by network vendor Ciena, the 9.6Tbps capable packet optical network is optimised for delivery of 10 and 100Gbps service connections with low latency between major UFB points of interconnect, data centres and larger customer sites in the North Island.
To put this into context it means that every minute, the equivalent of 18,000 two hour movies could be downloaded.
Kordia CTO Aaron Olphert points out that the “dramatic uptake” of UFB by businesses and consumers combined with the rapid adoption of streaming video services, software as a service and other cloud computing products, has led to a rapid increase in demand for better quality and availability in networks from both wholesale and enterprise customers.
“The adoption of these services has substantially changed the customer bandwidth profile for service providers,” Olphert says.
“This is creating a bandwidth tsunami and this is what this network addresses.”
Olphert says the a multi-million dollar investment, coupled with an “aggressive optical network rollout”, has enabled Kordia to meet a December 1 go-live date with the first major interconnection nodes within Auckland and between Hamilton, Palmerston North and Wellington ready to take on customer traffic.
Additional connectivity and interconnection nodes between Auckland, Tauranga, Napier and Wellington are expected to be available in early 2016.
Olphert says CityLink, Kordia’s launch Optical Transport Service customer, has gone live with the first dedicated high speed connection between Wellington and the Kapua Data Centre facility in Hamilton.
DWDM, or dense wavelength division multiplexing, is a technology which allows multiple high capacity circuits to be carried on a single optical fibre by using light of different wavelengths.
Through the technology, Olphert explains, greater throughput can be achieved from the existing inter-city cable infrastructure.
While DWDM technology isn’t new to New Zealand, Olphert believes Kordia’s network represents the latest technology available from Ciena, which has integrated support for packet and optical services and utilises Ciena’s orchestration and software defined network (SDN) solution Blue Planet.
Olphert adds that Kordia has focused on providing DWDM to data centres and locations driven by customer demand and that Kordia as a mission critical service provider will itself benefit from direct access to this DWDM network for its own managed core network.
“Kordia also runs its own internal network on the same services it provides to its customers,” Olphert adds.
“That way we are also a customer of our own network with our own staff not being shy about giving feedback on our service performance.
“This means we are able to continually improve and innovate.
“Whilst this is a large and strategic investment for Kordia, the unabated demand for capacity driven by todays services and those of tomorrow that we haven’t even thought of, will be supported by this network investment and he says the country’s businesses can be assured we can meet the capacity and performance they need today and well into the future.”