A Superchannel is mapped to one or more WaveBands for transport. WaveBands can be added or dropped, or routed optically in the core of a network, Iris Group says. Optical channel concatenation is an alternative to huge cross-connects, some of which are designed to support tens of thousands of ports. Start-up Altamar Networks, for example, recently announced a system designed to support up to 2 million ports. But a typical carrier network transmits large amounts of traffic to a limited number of destinations, Iris Group says.
Many wavelengths run in parallel along just a few routes.
So, it is more efficient to create fewer bigger pipes than to use many slower pipes, Iris Group claims. Analysts say Iris Group is essentially reinventing the wheel. There's no immediate need for this scale - and if there were, capital expenditure issues would quell the demand. Last year, the world was enamoured with getting new bandwidth. There was never going to be enough bandwidth to meet demand.