CAPEX/OPEX benefits of alien wavelengths for the next generation optical internet

Standard operational practice mandates deploying expensive transponders at the borders between transport network domains. While this provides service guarantees, it also brings high service cost and increased end-to-end delay for the traffic. Deploying open WDM interfaces, often referred to as Alien Wavelengths, is one solution to overcome these drawbacks. This article provides an overview of the development of the Alien Wavelength technology to date. CAPEX and OPEX savings examples are provided together with an extensive analysis of the application of the open WDM interfaces for supporting the future optical Internet and its demanding applications. Our analysis indicates up to 60% savings in deployment cost and up to 70% savings in power consumption for hight bit-rate services deployed via open WDM interfaces.