I'm getting a Metro-E circuit delivered, and have some questions about the optics my provider is requiring.
It's a 100Gb circuit, and over 100km long. The provider has had to engineer in a mid-span repeater/regenerator, and the link is testing good on across the span.
The provider has installed a pair of Ciena 6500 7-slot and a mux in my site. The 6500 is in a cabinet adjacent to my equipment.
Originally, the provider said that they'd support 2Km optics in my gear, but ran into problems. Now they're saying I need to provide 100Gig LR optics for this part of the span.
I'd rather stick with short range optics because the Vendor-part number for LR optics is on the order of $25,000 each. [ Yes, I know that price list, but that's crazy. ]
I'm having trouble deciphering the BoM for the Ciena so I can understand what each individual piece does, and documentation for these is locked behind lots of paywalls. But I'm assuming that the optics on the customer-facing side of the Ciena have little to no bearing on the SPAN side of the Ciena. I don't think that 10Km optics vs 2Km optics are going to have any bearing on the workings of the 100Km link. I kind of suspect that I could plug a 100Gb Bi/Di into the front side of the Ciena and still have end to end connectivity. However, the engineers on my calls haven't been able to explain anything other than "we had problems, now we're just following industry standards and you need to buy LR4 optics for what appears to be a 5 meter link, given that your equipment and our equipment are in adjoining racks."
1: Can you explain to me what the Ciena's doing, and if it's more complicated than the switching that I'm envisioning? Does the DWDM vs CWDM on the customer facing side really play into the span side of the link?
2: Any preferred third-party vendors for a QSFP-100G-LR4-S compatible optic, preferably available through Insight?
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