Usually, bandwidth on demand offerings relates to data traffic in layers 2 and 3 of the network. But ECI is now offering its Lambda on Demand, which gives the same functionality to layer 1 and the optical layer.

Lambda on Demand is an enhancement to ECI’s LightConnect bandwidth on demand application - part of its line of software-defined networking (SDN) applications, which the company has been launching over the last year.

The app provides bandwidth on demand for dynamic services and bursty applications when demand for data spikes.

“For example, with the data center interconnection backup process, you need a lot of bandwidth for a very short time,” writes Gali Malkiel, who heads up SDN applications at ECI, in an email to SDxCentral.

The Lambda on demand capability allocates the necessary number of wavelengths at the designated time. This will reduce service turn up time on both packet and optical networks, allowing networks to respond to real-time needs within minutes.

ECI is targeting the app to service providers and data center operators.

The optical layer of networks is getting more attention in the SDN world of late. Facebook is leading the charge on a new open source group – the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) – whose mission is to improve global Internet connections. One of TIP's goals is to create a convergence between the optical and packet layers.