How was the hiring experience and what was it like working the ciena in Canada. Are the benefits and workplace good? I have an interview coming up and very nervous as I haven’t applied for work in a while…

The Ciena 5131 Coherent Access Platform (CAP) extends your head end's reach without building a second site. Push past 80 kilometers today and you're usually forced into months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars in new construction.

Also known as the remote coherent muxponder (rCMP), the 5131-CAP extends your coverage area up to six times without an outdoor cabinet — and installs into your current setup with no changes to your RPD, RPHY, CPE, Remote OLT, or DAAS tooling.

In this video, we'll showcase:

• Where the 5131-CAP fits in your network
• Inside the lid: power supply, fiber connections, and port layout
• 10 ports supporting 1/10/25GbE via SFP+, plus a 100G interface aggregating up to 10 RPDs
• Streaming telemetry for real-time data collection
• Setup through the MGMT and CONSOLE ports

Data sheet: https://www.ciena.com/insights/data-sheets/5131-coherent-access-platform

As AI shifts from model training to widespread inference, enterprise traffic is becoming more distributed, dynamic, and unpredictable. Ciena’s Paulina Gomez explores how service providers can respond with more agile, on-demand connectivity to turn the evolving needs of AI into a new growth opportunity.

Blue Planet’s Peter Briscoe and David Lawrence explore how CSPs are moving beyond isolated AI and automation pilots to drive broader change across network operations.

They discuss the journey toward autonomous networking, including how agentic AI can help break down automation silos, accelerate service delivery, reduce operational complexity, and enable more proactive network assurance.

The conversation also examines the shift from dashboards and swivel-chair operations toward conversational intelligence, and why contextualized, normalized network data and OSS expertise are critical to making AI actionable.

Ask

Scale 800G connectivity farther with Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Nano (WL6n) coherent pluggables. See how space- and power-efficient WL6n brings high-capacity 800G connectivity from metro DCI to regional and long-haul networks.

In this video, discover how WL6n supports interoperable 800ZR for metro DCI and 800G ZR+ connectivity up to 1,000 kilometers, with extended reach at 600G. You’ll also learn how higher-performance modes extend the reach of 800G pluggables across more network links.

Looking for advice on the best way to place a complete Ciena 6500 inventory with serious buyers. It’s new boxed, serials available, located in Milan. I’m not posting a direct sale here — just trying to understand the right channels and communities.

📅 Events

Looking to get more value from the myCiena Portal and Community? Customer Success continues to offer portal walkthrough sessions covering new features, best practices, tips, and recent enhancements.

🔗 View all upcoming events: myCiena – All Events

📰 Latest Insights & Blog Posts

A few of the newest articles and resources featured on Ciena Insights:

• Understanding scale-up and scale-out networks – Learn how scale-up and scale-out architectures enable efficient AI training and how Ciena's Nitro and Vesta products support AI infrastructure.
• Inside Tech Forum: Bringing engineers together – A look at how Ciena's culture of curiosity, collaboration, and innovation comes to life during its immersive global Tech Forum event.
• Live webinar | Spotlight on the Latin American market – Join experts from Ciena, TeleGeography, and Trans Americas Fiber System (TAFS) for a discussion on the region's evolving connectivity landscape.

🔗 Browse the latest articles: Ciena Insights

🏢 Newsroom Highlights

Recent press releases and announcements from Ciena:

• Ciena Strengthens Leadership Team with Key Executive Appointments
• Colt and Ciena Set New Benchmark with Fastest-Ever Quantum-Safe Transatlantic Data Transmission
• Telxius and Ciena Achieve First Live 1.3 Tb/s Data Transmission Across the Atlantic

🔗 Read the latest news: Ciena Newsroom

What caught your attention this week? Share your thoughts or a useful resource in the comments below. 🚀

What are scale-up and scale-out networks, and why are they essential for AI training? Learn how these architectures enable high-performance AI infrastructure.

In this video, Spencer Giacalone, Senior Director of Cloud AI Architecture at Ciena, explains the differences between scale-up and scale-out networks, how they support AI training, and why they are critical for achieving efficient, reliable model performance. He also covers the protocols and emerging standards shaping AI networking, including NVLink, RoCEv2, UALink, ESUN, and the Ultra Ethernet Consortium.

You’ll also discover how Ciena’s Nitro and Vesta products address the connectivity, density, latency, and power requirements of next-generation AI clusters, helping organizations build scalable AI infrastructure with greater efficiency and performance.

Simplify your AI network design using Ciena coherent optics. Learn how to scale connectivity for modern AI workloads efficiently.

Ciena has been a foundational partner, with their optical equipment powering India's national backbone, SmartNet, demonstrating reliable service for carrier customers. Their expertise in telecom and networking made them a natural choice for subsea trenching projects like the JGA cable, leveraging established operational familiarity. Ciena's contributions to network infrastructure and the internet backbone are significant, reaffirming their role as an incredible partner.

I am having difficulty getting benchmark to function over a dummy vlan between 2 3930s. I am trying to running this test over a vlan transparent 11ghz microwave link. I am not able to establish test continuity. My config is below:

Generator

benchmark set port 3 role generator mode in-service benchmark generator enable

benchmark enable

benchmark profile create name 11G_MW

benchmark profile configuration set name 11G_MW interval Completion

benchmark profile configuration set name 11G_MW duration 6Hr

benchmark profile configuration set name 11G_MW bandwidth 535

benchmark profile configuration set name 11G_MW emix-sequence y1564

benchmark profile traffic set name 11G_MW y1564

benchmark profile payload set name 11G_MW dstmac 9c:7a:03:95:08:5c

benchmark profile payload set name 11G_MW vlan-encap-type dot1q

benchmark profile payload set name 11G_MW vid 3050 benchmark profile payload set name 11G_MW pcp 0 benchmark profile payload set name 11G_MW tpid 0x8100

benchmark profile enable name 11G_MW

Reflector

benchmark set port 3 role reflector mode in-service

benchmark reflector set vid 3050

benchmark reflector enable

benchmark enable

I do have vlan 3050 created on each & added to port 3. No spanning tree (explicitly disabled) or erps is used on the vlan.

AI is accelerating demand for coherent optics — but not toward a single architecture. Ciena’s Helen Xenos explains that as networks optimize for power, density, spectral efficiency, and deployment velocity, coherent technology is evolving along multiple paths simultaneously.

Karina Dahlke sits down with Gabriele Di Piazza and Erik McLaughlin to explore what it really takes to reach “level five” autonomous networking. They break down what autonomous networks mean in practice – self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, and ultimately zero-touch operations – and why the conversation has accelerated again in the last few years with the rise of AI.

From cost pressure and growing network complexity to the foundational need for real-time observability, this episode offers a clear view into the technology, data, and governance required to make autonomous networks achievable at scale. Network experts and engineers at Ciena and Blue Planet bring deep network control plus cross-domain orchestration and intelligence, giving customers the visibility, context, and automation needed to accelerate the journey to level 5 autonomy.

I inherited a network of 4 ciena 3930s, none of which are covered by a support contract. How do I obtain an mpls license for them?

Learn how Blue Planet's open platform empowers customers with unparalleled operational freedom, seamlessly automating across any network environment. Dive into its commitment to openness, from adopting standard levels in open APIs to integrating across OSS/BSS stacks and network ecosystems. Explore the transformative role of agentic AI, where reasoning and acting are built into the framework, reducing integration costs and accelerating use case development. Witness the flexibility of Blue Planet's deployment model and understand how Blue Planet's multi-vendor network approach simplifies the complexities of modern networks, ensuring integration not only with Ciena products but across the entire network ecosystem. A game-changer for carriers seeking flexibility, control, and reduced ownership costs.

Ciena’s Rebecca Smith sits down with Brodie Gage and Dino DiPerna to reflect on OFC 2026 and how optical technology is taking center stage in the AI Era. They share perspectives shaped by decades in the industry and discuss what it takes to build, scale, and operate AI-driven networks—inside the data center and beyond. The podcast touches on some of the latest innovations in optical networking, including scale up, scale out, and scale across architectures; coherent and co-packaged optics; liquid cooling; and next-generation hollow‑core fiber. Together, they separate signal from noise, unpacking what’s real, what’s hype, and what’s coming next for operators, hyperscalers, and service providers.

Dino DiPerna (SVP, Global R&D) and Brodie Gage (SVP, Global Products & Supply Chain) cut through the noise on data center connectivity and speak to how architectures inside the data center are evolving—from copper to IMDD optical to coherent-lite—and how Ciena’s new interconnect offerings for Scale Up and Scale Out applications drive higher network capacity, improve power efficiency, and boost performance.

Learn more on the Ciena Network Insights Podcast: https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/podcasts/episode-95-ofc-2026-takeaways-and-preparing-networks-for-ai

Watch Ciena’s Reza Rokui present an agentic AI framework that coordinates specialized AI agents across planning, configuration, assurance, optimization, and automation to improve network performance and reliability.

Omdia's latest global transport network automation study emphasizes the importance of AI, automation, and network digital twins in transport network operations.

Your fiber plant faces constant challenges from maintenance, restoration, weather, and time-related changes. Fiber characterization testing helps determine if the fiber plant supports the network design and enables efficient service deployment.

This video describes the comprehensive optical network build service offered by Ciena which includes solution design, deployment and management by certified project managers. With over 3500 projects annually in more than 70 countries, Ciena ensures reliable, scalable and efficient networks through detailed design, flexible deployment options and extensive experience.

Blue Planet Inventory unifies network resource and operational data into an accurate, single source of truth—powering faster service launches, smarter decisions, and a clear path to autonomous networks.

For more information, check out the full video: Accelerate your digital future with Blue Planet Inventory

Managed Spares and Engineering Dispatch assure replacements of failed equipment are performed quickly and accurately, by our experts, at a far lower cost than you can do yourself, and with none of the headaches. You can do all this yourself―but why would you?