In an age where data is essential to nearly every industry, the infrastructure that supports its seamless flow is critical. With the AI boom and technology advancing at warp speeds, the infrastructure must also move forward exponentially. Fortunately, fiber to data centers is becoming an increasingly crucial part of the telecom infrastructure.
The Role of Fiber Optics in Data Centers
Fiber can transmit data at lightning-fast speeds by using light to transfer information. This ensures a higher bandwidth with lower signal loss over long distances, making them perfect for intercontinental subsea cables and cross-country transmissions.
Internally within a data center, fiber interconnects different components such as servers, switches, and storage systems. Once these fibers leave the data center, they connect to other facilities, cloud providers, and end-users forming the backbone of the global internet. Due to their scalability and reliability, fiber to data centers has become the preferred choice for data transmission and emerging technologies such as 5G, AI, quantum computing, and IoT.
Challenges Facing Fiber to Data Centers
Despite the advantages of fiber optics, the integration of fiber to data centers has not been without some obstacles. The biggest is how to scale massive distances for high-performance terrestrial connectivity, an issue that can be seen both across major bodies of water as well as across land masses.
The use of submarine cables connecting to inland data centers has been a huge milestone, bridging the data gap between continents and foreign governments. However, natural and accidental incidents put these cables at risk of being clipped or damaged, knocking connectivity offline for indefinite periods. On land, the challenge becomes how to navigate cables across municipalities, private lands, and natural environmental features. Both scenarios are very costly in matters of real estate selection, power availability, and environmental considerations.
Additionally, the integration of AI workloads and heavier traffic within data centers is calling for optimized fiber network designs to minimize congestion and latency. Simultaneously addressing these concerns alongside aging current fiber networks, the higher need for energy efficiency, and ongoing cybersecurity risks further complicates the situation and ultimately leads to a financially costly process.
Innovations Improving Fiber and Data Center Efficiency
Researchers and organizations are developing unique solutions to enhance the fiber that runs to data centers.
Hyperscalers have been partnering with telcos through the collaborative business model of Managed Optical Fiber Networks (MOFN) to gain connectivity in regions they do not own to operate their own terrestrial networks. This system works with hyperscalers being able to lease or purchase extensive fiber networks that belong to telcos to activate them with new connections, helping to avoid the costs of laying down brand new fiber infrastructure networks.
Work is also being done on the innovation of fiber itself. Recently, researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have demonstrated that hollow-core fiber (HCF) cables can transmit data nearly 50% faster than conventional glass fiber optics. Such improvements have proven beneficial for the use of AI-driven data centers which require ultra-low latency to process vast amounts of information in real time. The HCF cables also enable data centers to be further apart without experiencing latency increases. This increased flexibility helps optimize data center placement, reducing environmental impact and providing easier access to renewable energy sources all while enhancing performance.
Although the physical fiber components are important, it would be remiss to skip over the internal software that is also working to revolutionize the efficiency of fiber to data centers. Software-defined networking (SDN), a decade old technology, is now being utilized to improve data center architecture. It works internally, allowing intelligent, automated data traffic routes. SDN breaks down applications into three distinct layers that are dynamic and programmable, optimizing fiber utilization and reducing network congestion. SDN management simplifies tasks across interconnected data centers, enables the ability to accommodate real-time changes in data traffic patterns, and is incredibly scalable and independent from the underlying infrastructure.
The Future of Fiber-Connected Data Centers
Stable connectivity and robust data transmission provided with data center fiber routes is a central part of the telecom infrastructure. Luckily fiber to data centers have already seen major improvements, and thanks to continual advancements, should continue to experience such innovative changes.
GeoTel understands the demand for high speeds and low latency. We offer the nation’s most reliable and accurate telecom infrastructure fiber maps via GIS or our renowned SaaS product, TeleTracker. Reach out to GeoTel’s specialists today to access data center fiber information.
