OREANDA-NEWS. March 01, 2010. TTK commenced of a large-scale project to double the capacity of its backbone DWDM network, the EurasiaHighway, which crosses the entire breadth of the Russian Federation, by mid-2010. Ultimately, this network upgrade will allow TTK to increase its overall protected capacity to up to 1.6Tbps, and its total unreserved capacity to 3.2Tbps, reported the press-centre of TTK.

The EurasiaHighway, equipped with OptiX BWS1600G, is to be upgraded with 40Gbps solutions supplied and installed by world-leading provider of next-generation network technologies Huawei. TTK has pledged that the capacity upgrade will be carried out without major interruption to service on currently-lit fibres despite an aggressive project timeline that aims for completion by the end of the first half of the year.

This will be accomplished by installing new 40Gbps network transponders throughout the existing network to allow the addition of further optical wavelength channels. Different backbone segments will then receive 1-8 additional wavelength channels, each of 40Gbps capacity, depending on current and forecast capacity utilisation. With these in place, TTK will be able to switch current traffic to the new channels while it replaces the 10Gbs transponders operating on the current network with new 40Gbps ones.

As a result, TTK’s backbone network capacity will be doubled on average by mid-2010, while its international capacity on the EurasiaHighway will be increased by an average of 2.3 times. In absolute terms, this means the network’s most utilised sections will have a fully protected capacity of 530Gbps, and even the least utilised sections will have a minimum 80Gbps.

“We understand the importance of providing the backbone operators with innovative solutions to upgrade their networks, so Huawei pays special attention to the development of next-generation 40G and 100G technologies,” said Huawei CIS President Mr. Wang Kexiang. “We are proud TTK – one of the largest network operators in Russia – is implementing our advanced solutions to help strengthen its leading position in the region and continue its enviable record of commercial successes in the age of high definition video and next-generation mobile communications.”

“Over the last three years, we have seen the levels of data transmitted via our network grow rapidly due to both increasing broadband penetration in the Russian regions and international demand for a secure, reliable and fast alternative to subsea data transit between Asia and Europe,” explained Mr. Andrey Pavlov, SVP and director of technical development at TTK. “By 2008, it became clear that our existing technology would not be able to keep pace with demand for more than three years, despite several times adding new 10Gbps optical wavelength channels to the most popular backbone segments.”

He concluded: “With Huawei’s help, we can continue to meet capacity requirements while preserving our existing infrastructure and investments to satisfy and anticipate our customers’ and partners’ requirements for high-speed data exchange solutions.”

Commencement of the project follows a large-scale pilot in which TTK and Huawei ran exhaustive tests on the 1,140km Moscow-St. Petersburg section of TTK’s network between February and March 2008. These tests confirmed that OptiX BWS1600G allows the set-up of additional 40Gbps optical wavelength channels on the EurasiaHighway without major overhaul of the backbone core or interruption of services already deployed.