What is DWDM and Why is it Important?
It has been almost 20 years since DWDM came on the scene with Ciena’s introduction of a 16 channel system in March of 1996, and in the last two decades it has revolutionized the transmission of information over long distances. DWDM is so ubiquitous that we often forget that there was a time when it did not exist and when accessing information from the other side of the globe was expensive and slow. Now we think nothing of downloading a movie or placing an IP call across oceans and continents. Current systems typically have 96 channels per optical fiber , each of which can run at 100Gbps, compared to the 2.5Gbps per channel in the initial systems. All of this got me thinking about how it often takes two innovations coupled together to make a revolution. Personal computers did not revolutionize office life until they were coupled with laser printers. Similarly, the benefits of DWDM were enormous because o...