Nine customers testing TIP Voyager white box transponder: ADVA

ADVA Optical Networking says it is working with nine customers on trials of the Telecom Infra Project's Voyager white box open packet DWDM transponder. The customers include Tier 1 service providers and large enterprises, who ADVA says have launched proof of concept (POC) activities.

The Facebook-led Telecom Infra Project (TIP), inspired by the social media company's Open Compute Project, aims to promote the development and use of open communications platforms for outside plant applications (see "Telecom Infra Project attracts optical communications companies"). The Voyager packet transport system is the result of work within TIP's Open Optical Packet Transport project group. It performs packet switching and routing as well as DWDM transponder functions. The 1RU unit features twelve 100-Gbps QSFP28 client ports and four 200-Gbps 16QAM interfaces on the line side (see "Telecom Infra Project intros Voyager white box open packet DWDM transponder").

ADVA was the first – and, as far as Lightwave is aware, still the only – mainstream optical transport systems company that has added Voyager to its systems portfolio. (Coriant has announced it will support Voyager systems within its Coriant Light IP Solution open software platform; see "TIP optical transport members vary in Voyager white box transponder support.") ADVA now says it has integrated support of Voyager into the ADVA FSP Network Manager, as well as created service offerings associated with the system's use.

ADVA expects the POCs will help the company further refine its Voyager offering.

"The two founding principles of the Voyager and Open Optical Packet Transport projects are openness and innovation and it's these principles that have guided everything that our team has developed here," said Niall Robinson, VP, global business development, ADVA Optical Networking. "Now that the Voyager system is complete, we're focusing much of our time on further developing our services to ensure that customers have a turn-key solution. That's why these POCs are so important. We're able to see firsthand what resonates. Which services do the customers like? Which services do they need to see more of? Which services are truly critical? And what's fascinating here is the breadth of applications these POCs cover. The lessons learnt from the next few months will be key as we move from trials to commercialization."

Elsewhere within TIP, Facebook has stated that Telia is making progress on deployment and test of Voyager over its production long-haul fiber-optic network, while Orange plans to evaluate Voyager as well. Equinix and MTN Group also have announced plans to give the system a workout. It is not clear whether these companies are among ADVA's nine customers.

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