Data is a critical asset that underpins operations, innovation and decision-making for enterprises of all sizes. Protecting this invaluable resource is a top priority, and automatic data backup at remote locations is emerging as a critical survival strategy.

This shift has transformed the role of data centers, which now offer full-scale connectivity, disaster recovery solutions and comprehensive data management capabilities that are indispensable for enterprises.

The secure transport of high-capacity data over long distances is essential for maintaining data integrity. Using layer 1 encryption and link redundancy ensures that sensitive information remains protected from interception or corruption during transit. These measures are crucial in data center access deployments, which often support mission-critical applications for sectors such as finance, healthcare and cloud services. As users increasingly demand uninterrupted access to data anytime and anywhere, data center access solutions must respond with seamless, high-bandwidth connectivity.

The rise of edge data centers

The rapid growth of IoT, cloud computing and big data analytics is reshaping the data center landscape. These technologies generate vast amounts of data that must be processed quickly and efficiently.

As enterprises embrace generative artificial intelligence (AI), and as the focus of AI shifts from training to inference, it is anticipated that edge computing will be required to address the need for reduced latency and enhanced privacy. Edge data centers are situated closer to end users, so they avoid delays and enhance the performance of latency-sensitive applications.

The need for cost efficiency also plays a role in the growing reliance on edge data centers. Constructing and operating a data center requires significant capital and operational expenditure. Colocation facilities enable businesses to share infrastructure costs so they can benefit from economies of scale in areas such as power consumption, cooling and security. As a result, more organizations are adopting edge colocation data centers with connectivity provided through high-speed wavelength services. This is a cost-effective alternative to building and maintaining dedicated infrastructure. It allows businesses to scale operations while optimizing resource utilization.

Wavelength services for high-speed data center access

As more enterprises migrate IT operations to the cloud, wavelength services have become a more attractive option for data center access and interconnectivity. The Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Demarcation (PSD) is a versatile solution designed to meet the demands of these high-capacity, low-latency applications while ensuring robust security and scalability.

Wavelength services provide point-to-point private line connectivity that delivers dedicated, full-rate bandwidth over layer 1 wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks or optical transport networks (OTNs). These services are protocol-independent and characterized by ultra-low latency, high availability and secure transmission.

All these attributes are essential for latency-sensitive applications such as data center interconnect, storage area networks and high-performance computing. The 1830 PSD, leveraging standardized MEF63 layer 1 services, simplifies service deployment and orchestration by ensuring consistent service attributes across multivendor environments.

The 1830 PSD flexibly supports Ethernet and wavelength services within the same platform, making it an ideal solution for extending network services to customer premises or out-of-footprint locations. By delivering cost-effective, secure layer 1 connectivity, it enables service providers to offer seamless access to cloud services, storage and high-performance computing infrastructure while helping to ensure reliable and efficient data center operations. Its advanced features, such as full-rate services up to 10 Gb/s and layer 1 encryption, allow enterprises to access data centers securely and cost effectively.

The importance of layer 1 security with the 1830 PSD-2

In an era where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, securing sensitive data during transmission is critical. Fiber optic cables, once thought impervious, are now vulnerable to tapping and interception. Network operators need robust layer 1 encryption at the transport layer to ensure data confidentiality and integrity.

The Nokia 1830 PSD-2 provides an advanced solution that integrates physical layer encryption with optical data links to enable end-to-end protection. It can combine these capabilities with subnetwork connection path protection (SNCP) for OTN paths when required.

The 1830 PSD-2 implements AES-256 Galois Counter Mode (GCM) encryption at OTN layer 1. This ensures that data remains encrypted throughout its journey without compromising bandwidth or performance. By leveraging 10GE transparent mapping over ODU2e, the system offers a seamless, secure data transport solution for industries that demand uncompromising security, including finance, healthcare and government.

Pairing the 1830 PSD-2 with the Nokia 1830 Secure Management Server (SMS) simplifies and automates symmetric key management to support quantum-safe encryption, helping to reduce OPEX while maintaining best-in-class protection. This architecture ensures that, even if intercepted, data remains unreadable to unauthorized entities. Features such as trusted entropy generators for key creation, secure key distribution, periodic key rotation, and separation of duties between the network operations center (NOC) and security operations center (SOC) enhance overall security.

With its innovative design, the Nokia 1830 PSD-2 addresses emerging threats cost effectively and offers an essential layer of defense for mission-critical data transmission.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, enterprises need to have secure and reliable connectivity to their mission-critical data. Wholesale network operators can take advantage of new revenue-generating opportunities by offering secure wavelength services to enterprises that need high-speed, dedicated and secure connectivity for their data applications.

Together, the Nokia 1830 PSD and 1830 SMS provide secure, low-latency, high-capacity wavelength services that enable data center access and interconnectivity. By addressing critical security, performance and scalability needs, these solutions help enterprises optimize their operations and meet the demands of emerging applications.

Find out more

Read the 1830 PSD application note to learn more about how you can address evolving data center demands with secure and reliable wavelength services.