When is Dark Fibre not dark?

[TrentOC]

Trick question.

I have encountered businesses requesting 100mbps Dark Fibre pricing and they are most likely looking for an e-Line (P2P) 100Mbps service utilising Fibre for the last mile.

Those that understand Dark Fibre know that fibre carriers do not limit the bandwidth of Dark Fibre.

[Elss]

Dark Fibre is a fibre pair provided from A point to B point. It is dedicated and not shared with anyone.

The carrier uses no electronics and the end user needs to supply its own optics to "light" the fibre.

For example if the end user puts 100Gbps optics on the end of Dark Fibre and has 100Gbps switches then the link will run at pure 100Gbps.

The moment a carrier uses electronics such as transmission equipment, switches or routers to supply a service then its not dark fibre.

Voda needed dark fibre for its base stations and TPG has undertaken to build the dark fibre for Voda's use.

[WayneR · Accepted solution]

A fibre connections connects A & B end via physical layer (Layer 1)

The reason why it's called dark is that the fibre does not have A light source attached for example SFP or Active equipment and no traffic is being conducted over this fibre connection/link.

Once a light source is attached the dark fibre would be now lit and no longer dark.

It sounds like your customer wants to connect to a POP or point of presence that connects to the outside world (Internet) and if they do not have it in place they will more than likely need to
Connect the dark fibre to a provider.

Sometimes providers will supply a link via their network the customer may just need a link from their site to the provider gear/Site and The provider does not build their own network hence the need for dark fibre with another company