Dark Fibre

Dark Fibre

Subject : Science and Technology

Section: Awareness of IT

Context

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has slapped heavy penalties in a 2015 ‘dark fibre’ case that saw certain brokers exploiting the National Stock Exchange’s (NSE’s) internet infrastructure to get faster connectivity to its colocation (colo) facilities.

Details:

• GKN established direct peer-to-peer (P2P) connectivity with the help of dark fibre or near-dark fibre which assured more speed and low latency, thereby ensuring faster access to market data.
• This deprived other brokers using the colo facility who did not take dark fibre services from any unauthorised vendors.

Concept:

Dark fibre:

• It is an unused optical fibre that has been laid but is not currently being used in fibre-optic communications. Since fibre-optic cable transmits information in the form of light pulses, a “dark” cable refers to one through which light pulses are not being transmitted.
• Companies lay extra optical fibres in order to avoid cost repetition when more bandwidth is needed.
• It is also known as unlit fibre.
• These unused fibre optic cables later created a new market for unique private services that could not be accommodated on lit fibre cables (i.e cables used in traditional long-distance communication).
• Unused strands of Fiber are leased to customers to create their own privately-operated optical fibre network. This is different from the leasing of bandwidth. In other words, It is in contrast to purchasing bandwidth or a leased line on an existing network. The Dark Fiber network is under total control of the client rather than the network provider.
• The benefits which can be reaped from it are –
  • High performance
  • Secured network flow and separation from other traffic
  • Superfast speeds
  • Low and Fixed cost
  • Reliable medium
  • Full control of the fibre-optic network.
• Applications include:
  • Fibre to the Antenna (FTTA)-Mobile network providers can use dark fibre to provide mobile backhaul, 5G backhaul and core network connections.
  • Data Centre Interconnect (DCI)-Dark fibre can be used to provide a high capacity, direct point to point connection between two data centres.
  • National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs)-Most National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs) that link together Universities and research establishments use dark fibre.
• There are numerous licenses under which a vendor can lease dark fibre in India.
• Co-location is a data centre within the exchange premises hosting a broker’s server that is connected by fibre network. Co-lo space is rented by exchanges to brokers for speed trading.
• Some brokers are selectively allowed to install dark fibre without a clear policy. The NSE has no clearly-defined public policy as to when and how it permitted competing carriers into co-lo, which ensured advantages to a select few.