Virtual Technologies and Solutions (VTS), an Internet service provider in Burkina Faso, selected IP Infusion's OcNOS to power the first commercial deployment of the Telecom Infra Project's Cassini solution in Africa. The network interconnects Ouagadougou and Dakola with a 200Gbps fiber link spanning 200km, extending capacity from the West Africa Cable System (WACS), ACE and MainOne submarine cables.
The Challenge
VTS needed to link two major cities in Burkina Faso and extend bandwidth from international submarine systems, while keeping total cost of ownership in check. The team wanted an open, disaggregated approach that would let them add high-capacity fiber links without locking into a single-vendor stack.
The Solution
VTS deployed TIP's Cassini, a disaggregated coherent switch and open packet transponder built by Edgecore Networks, running IP Infusion's OcNOS network operating system with optical modules from Lumentum. OcNOS provides the networking stack for white box disaggregated solutions and supports the transition from traditional to open networks.
- Cassini platform: Edgecore's open optical packet transponder, developed through TIP's Open Optical and Packet Transport project group.
- OcNOS SP: full-featured network OS handling Access and Aggregation roles on the link.
- Lumentum optics: coherent 100/200 Gbps optical interfaces across the 200km span.
Outcomes
The 200Gbps Ouagadougou to Dakola link is the first of its kind in Burkina Faso, delivering faster and more reliable connectivity for VTS customers. Centralized management and provisioning in OcNOS gave the operations team a path to network automation, making service provisioning and configuration changes faster than before.
"The optical transport solution featuring IP Infusion's OcNOS and the Edgecore Cassini transponder platform with optical modules from Lumentum helped VTS to easily add high capacity fiber links which improved our operational experience," said Abdou Dia, CEO of Virtual Technologies and Solutions.
Why OcNOS
OcNOS gave VTS a validated, open networking stack that paired cleanly with the Cassini hardware and let the team scale capacity without traditional vendor lock-in. As CTO Issam Fayad noted, the centralized management and provisioning layer in OcNOS provided the flexibility VTS needed to adopt automation across the network.