AJC Network Upgrade in 2008

In April 2008, AJC completed its first project upgrade. The capacity of the AJC Network was upgraded to a total of 120G+120G (equivalent to 240G unprotected). The AJC cable system was ready for service in December 2001, with an initially lit capacity of 40 Gbit/s protected upon the completion of the AJC initial project.

In mid 2007, AJC contracted for an Upgrade of the initially installed AJC capacity of 40G+40G by 80G+80G to total 120G+120G (equivalent to 240G unprotected). This Upgrade required some additional equipment in each of the AJC cable stations but no change to the wet segment comprising the submarine cable and repeaters. The Upgrade was partially completed in December 2007, with final upgrade acceptance as scheduled on 14 April 2008. The Upgrade has a five year warranty.

As part of the analysis for the Upgrade, the supplier advised that technical improvements, including new FEC (Forward Error Correction), provide increased design capacity to a minimum of 1320 Gbit/s between Australia and Guam and 1000 Gbit/s between Guam and Japan. The different design capacity is due to different repeaters south of Guam compared to north of Guam.

The Upgrade provides not only continuity of AJC's existing SDH products of Protected and Unprotected capacity but supports higher speed interfaces and introduced GbE & 10GbE Ethernet plus 10G Direct Wavelength Access capacity.

While the wavelengths installed during the Upgrade are very reliable, the Upgrade also includes wavelength protection. Wavelength protection provides for automatic switching of traffic on a wavelength to a spare wavelength in the event of failure. This automatic wavelength protection operates at a similar speed to the Protected SDH automatic switching and is measured in tens of milliseconds.