Dark fiber
Dark fiber is optical fiber leased or owned without transmission equipment attached, so the customer lights it with its own optics and controls capacity and routing. Lit services, by contrast, are bandwidth sold by a carrier over fiber it lights and manages, such as wavelengths or Ethernet. Large campuses often want dark fiber pairs on diverse routes, while smaller users frequently buy lit services.
The full guide · Water, gas & fiberDark Fiber vs. Lit Services: Which Does a Data Center Site Need?How dark fiber and lit services differ for data centers: control, capacity, IRUs, optics, maintenance, and what each one asks of the site and its routes.Where Dark fiber comes up
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