Advantage

• Every wavelength is independent of others
• Optical amplifier can act on all wavelengths, providing cost savings over a single amplifier per fiber.
• The capability to support 160 wavelengths means that over 1Tbps of traffic can be used.
• Each wavelength can be a different traffic type such as SONET, gigabit, Ethernet or IP can be operated at different speeds.
• This provides Bandwidth and protocol flexibility with payload efficiency.

Disadvantage

• Some fiber plants are not suitable for DWDM
• Vendor Inter-operability issues exist
• DWDM systems can be extremely difficult to troubleshoot, manage and provision.
• Service providers typically run SONET over DWDM to utilize SONETS’s network management capabilities but DWDM equipment’s need to be managed.