Fiber for Breakfast Week 7: The Unsung Connectors of Hyperscale Data Centers

Fiber for Breakfast Week 7: The Unsung Connectors of Hyperscale Data Centers

Long-haul, high-capacity fiber is often taken for granted, but planning, building, and lighting up thousands of miles of glass requires extensive planning and a lot of construction, especially when the latest connections are designed for the $500 billion Stargate Project underway in Abilene, Texas. A key part to this and all other fiber projects is the inline amplifier (ILA) shelters built approximately every 50 miles along the fiber routes to strengthen the signal and keep data flowing rather than fading away.

“We have the teams that are doing the [ILA] builds,” said Michael Thomas, Regional Vice President of Integration, Network Connex. “We figure out where and how we’re going to implement them. Once mapped, we look at the actual design for the inside and outside of these [shelters], and how it’s going to look with the number of fibers they’re going to be using, where it is going to be located, what the climate is, and all that stuff.”

ILA shelters are typically built and pre-configured both internally and externally as much as possible for ease of installation on a poured concrete pad that has access to power. The structure can simply be transported into place via truck and lifted by crane onto the pad and secured, followed by the installation of power, cooling, fiber, and electronics for amplification, as well as any other gear the operator may want.

“We’re talking about a mini-data center that’s sitting out in the middle of nowhere that may have between 17 to 200 racks, depending on what the use case is and what the customers’ needs are,” said Thomas. “[The cable] really varies. A lot of times we’re dealing with 864 [strands]. The size of the huts limits the amount of fiber you can actually amplify, just due to the space and power required for electronics and they’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

A string of ILAs will sit on the line of every long-haul fiber route, connecting data centers, cities, and major connection exchanges together. ILAs also represent an opportunity for rural communities seeking broadband options.

“There’s a lot of chatter and use cases about potentially providing connectivity to rural ISPs and WISPs,” said Thomas. “These lines are going between large cities, so there’s an information superhighway right through the middle of [rural areas]. They could have connectivity points in there. The bandwidth is just passing right by them.”

Depending on the size, open space, and power availability, other potential opportunities for ILA shelter usage include edge data center applications and interconnection (IX) points to increase traffic.

“That’s definitely an evolution that is going to start happening,” said Thomas. “The hyperscalers are driving it. Colocation companies are big into this as well. If you think about it from their perspective, if I’m leasing space in each data center and if I have an interconnected fiber between the two, that’s going to drive real estate in both sides of my business area. And when you start getting colocators in there, that opens more for interconnected services along that route, as opposed to just both ends.”

Click here for the slides presented and here for the full interview.