Due to the explosive growth in global bandwidth demand, data centers and service providers have been busy adding new fiber infrastructure, interconnects, and upgrading their systems and hardware to newer and faster technologies. Therefore, both latency and optical signal synchronization are critical factors that engineering teams must manage to maximize performance and support customers across industries.
One of the ways to solve the signal timing problem is to deploy optical time delays. These fiber delays allow engineers to fine-tune the system in a fraction of the time (often as short as nanoseconds), but the key is to deploy it in the most efficient way possible.
What drives the need for balance and synchronization?
When data centers enter into service level agreements (SLAs), they aim to deliver a specific level of performance, including latency, especially when supporting time-sensitive entities such as stock exchanges, banks, and high-frequency traders. Since customers pay for a specific latency value, it can be expected that they will get the same level of performance and throughput that others pay for the same service (ie, one entity will not have an advantage over the other). Given that equipment is often located in different racks or locations within a data center, meeting SLAs and balancing wait times for all customers on the service is a significant challenge. To overcome this challenge, the use of optical delay to equalize all applicable fiber links is a useful element in the overall solution.
Differences in installed network technology
As technology evolves and engineering teams select and deploy newer equipment as part of their fiber infrastructure, this is often done in stages rather than simultaneously. Due to the performance differences between new and legacy systems, signal timing/synchronization and subsequent delay effects are important issues to address. Deploying optical delays to match timing is one way to overcome these timing barriers as the system is adjusted.
Compliance with regulatory requirements
Similar to SLAs between data centers and their customers, government and regulatory measures may also drive demand for balanced service offerings. Taking the European Union as an example, the recent Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) outlines transparency and disclosure regulations for companies operating in the EU. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II reform legislation outlines financial "transaction escrow services...that are fair and non-discriminatory and do not create disorderly trading conditions or incentives for market abuse." In other words, the goal is to ensure that A fairer and more transparent financial trading market. Part of meeting this requirement at a data center or financial institution includes equalizing links for all traders on the same platform.
DIY solutions are time-consuming and inefficient
To address these areas, some data centers have taken the approach of building ad hoc setups in their facilities, rather than finding partners specializing in this area. While it may work initially, often these methods are not designed as efficiently as they should be and don't scale well. Additionally, as seen in recent years, ever-changing markets and technological changes have resulted in the need for greater precision, performance, and space efficiency.
Building a custom optical time-lapse solution with high accuracy is not easy or simple, but requires advanced manufacturing and test equipment, experienced personnel, specialized processes, and a significant amount of time, especially as complexity increases. A home-built setup that was running a few years ago wasn't even comparable to the setup needed to achieve the desired results now, and ended up being a cost-prohibitive service for customers who might have it as part of the network.
ZR Fiber now offers the highest density, fully customizable platform available to engineering teams that need to deploy optical time delays to balance link latency or address these related critical system applications. Partnering with ZR means engineers can rely on efficient methods to rapidly deploy optical delays without wasting time and cost purchasing inferior or unproven methods.
Optical fiber distribution box
The rack-mounted distribution box can hold up to 12 high-density modules, each of which can hold up to 12 fiber optic delay spools, for a total of 144 time delays. In addition to saving a lot of rack space, it allows users to easily add, reconfigure and control their setup configuration as business and customer needs evolve. To meet today's stringent requirements, each time delay can be achieved with sub-nanosecond accuracy, providing an unmatched level of performance.
