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WaveRouter family photo

WaveRouter Family

Ciena’s WaveRouter™ is a family of purpose-built coherent metro routers designed to unify IP and Optical in the metro—with ultimate flexibility, future-proof extensibility, and improved network sustainability. WaveRouter can easily and flexibly scale wide area network (WAN) traffic—with the ability to scale up and out, delivering capacity when and where it’s needed. With optional WaveLogic™ capabilities, WaveRouter can support dense, any-to-any, high-capacity coherent routing and switching metro applications.

Features and benefits

  1. Multi-layer (IP/Optical) awareness and coordination

  2. Commercial temperature (0°C to +40°C) for space-constrained locations

  3. Modular redundant controller and fabric, providing scale from 6-192 Tb/s

  4. IP routing, BGP-LU, SR-MPLS, Carrier Ethernet, and SRv6 ready

  5. MACsec and IPsec ready

  6. SDN management, including support for protocols such as NETCONF/YANG, gNMI/gRPC with dial-in/dial-out streaming telemetry

How does WaveRouter fit into coherent routing?

Ciena’s coherent routing provides network operators a path to achieve IP/Optical convergence that is designed to optimize performance through multi-layer operations, dynamic scalability, and improved overall network sustainability. The WaveRouter family of routers provide operators a way to rapidly and cost-effectively scale their metro networks to address the surging bandwidth demands and markets for new services.

Metro convergence success demands an intelligent programmable optical layer, driven by multi-layer operations.

What is metro routing done differently?

WaveRouter represents a true break from legacy constraints—a reimagined routing platform architecture for the converged metro. WaveRouter’s 600mm depth is a footprint-efficient design that fits anywhere. WaveRouter can support a wide range of plugs and submodules without stranding chipset or fabric capacity—whether pluggables (including WaveLogic) or ultra-long-haul submodules.

Flexible commons, fabric, and interface modules

The WaveRouter family of coherent metro routers offer metro operators a way to easily scale up with extensible switch fabric and flexible cabling options for non-adjacent rows. WaveRouter can reduce blast radius, spread thermal load over multiple racks, and take advantage of fragmented racks.

WaveRouter-2 (6 RU), WaveRouter-7 (12 RU), and WaveRouter-13 (21 RU):

Image of the CTM 194-0700-900 Control Timing Module

Control Timing Module (CTM)

  • 1+1 redundant
  • Route processor (RP)
  • Control plane and fabric management
Image of the Fabric Box 194-0800-900 32x QSFP-DD Fabric Box

Fabric box (FB, WR-7, and WR-13 only)

  • 32 x QSFP-DD or mix of DAC/AEC/AOC ports
  • Full duplex between all interface boxes
  • N+1 fabric redundancy
Image of the Q-Box 194-2000-900 QB6 15x QSFP-DD Q-Box
  • Any housing slot
  • Networking ports
    • 15 x 100/200/400GbE or 100/200/400 WL5n 400GZR/ZR+
  • 20 x 400G QSFP-DD fabric ports

Insights

Video

Chalk Talk: WaveRouter, Ciena’s purpose-built coherent metro router

Meet Ciena’s purpose-built coherent metro router and hear how Ciena’s simple, scalabl...

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White Paper

Redefining Metro Networks for Scale, Simplicity, and Sustainability

This paper by Omdia explores the evolution of metro platform architecture to hybrid-D...

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White Paper

Ciena’s Coherent Routing Paves the Way for True IP/Optical Convergence

Ciena is completely transforming coherent routing by introducing WaveRouter, a new pl...

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Runner on street

blog

Coherent Routing: A rapid evolution to IP/Optical convergence

There’s way more to IP/Optical convergence than just a plug in a router. Scott McFeel...

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