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10 Gig Metro Ethernet Network Circles Southern, Western and Central Maine

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Karl Clapp

GWI is currently working on building a next-generation network to take full advantage of the Three Ring Binder and extend our service offerings throughout Maine. As part of this effort we’ve begun migrating our network backbone to a Carrier Grade Cyan 10 Gigabit Ethernet platform that is Metro Ethernet compliant, but what does that mean?

Cyan 10 Gig Ethernet Equipment used in GWI's Maine Network

GWI uses Cyan 10Gig Ethernet switches to light the Three Ring Binder in Maine

Why Cyan?

Cyan is a leading supplier of purpose built, next-generation packet optical transport platforms. They are currently ranked sixth by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top fifty venture-backed companies and listed among the top three companies in the information technology sector. Cyan is founded and lead by a team of industry veterans with a track record of successful innovation with companies like Cerent, Calix, and Cisco. On top of this impressive resume, Cyan also met GWI’s requirements for:

Compatible with the existing network and services
Supports emerging product requirements
Flexible platform to support future growth

Metro Ethernet Compliance

The new network is designed to meet the demanding needs of carriers and large enterprises that cannot tolerate downtime and require interoperability across multiple platforms. To achieve this, we selected a platform that is standard- based and meets or exceeds the five (5) attributes that distinguish Carrier Ethernet from a normal LAN deployment as set forth by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF):

Offer standardized services - Requires no changes to customer LAN equipment or networks and accommodates existing network connectivity.
Scalability of bandwidth - Enables the provisioning of services from 1Mbps to 10Gbps and beyond in granular increments.
Reliability – Meets the most demanding quality and availability requirements, offering rapid recovery of 50ms for circuit failures, virtually un-discernible to human users.
Quality of Service - Enables the provision of service level agreements that provide end-to-end performance matching of requirements for IP Telephony, video and data
Service management - Provides the ability to monitor, diagnose and centrally manage the network using standards-based, vendor independent systems

10GbE (Ten Gigabit Ethernet)

Ethernet has come a long way since it was created for small local area networks in 1973 and delivered 2.94Mbps (million bits per second). These days, Ethernet connects multiple locations around the world at speeds of up to 100Gbps (gigabits per second). As the use of video and voice applications increases, bandwidth consumption grows. The low cost of Ethernet, ease of upgrade, and constant bandwidth needs are reasons why companies are migrating to Ethernet.

GWI’s network is being upgraded to a full 10 Gigabits per second from New York city to Bangor. This is much faster than the typical home or small business LAN which has 100Mbps capabilities while larger businesses typically deploy a 1Gbps Ethernet network locally or across specific regions. Very large enterprises, regional ISP’s, and content delivery networks, such as Netflix, require more bandwidth for applications or data replication and use circuits of 10Gbps or more. Typically the only companies utilizing 40Gbps or 100Gbps Ethernet are the tier-1 Internet providers such as Level3 or Tinet.

Where is this network?

By the end of August 2012, GWI will be utilizing a small portion of the available capacity over the entire 1100+ mile Three Ring Binder fiber network, and have two geographically diverse and protected carrier class 10GbE paths to Bangor, one beginning in New York, the other in Boston. Service north and east of Bangor will also be upgraded to a full Gigabit.

Locations on our 10Gb network include:

Boston, MA
New York, NY
Portland, South Portland, Scarborough, Biddeford, Dayton, Bridgton, Rumford, Farmington, Skowhegan, Dover-Foxcroft, Orono, Old Town, Bangor, Brewer, Belfast, Rockland, Bath, and Brunswick, Maine.
Contact GWI for additional locations.

We’re looking forward to offering Maine businesses a highly reliable, standards based connection for a reasonable price, and enabling business owners to connect multiple remote offices together in a Wide Area Network with the performance and experience they’d typically get in a local office network environment.