Refer to the table. A customer investigates connectivity options for a DCI between two production data centers to aid a large-scale migration project. The migration is estimated to take 20 months to…

CWDM over dark fiber requires significant capital expenditure on both dark fiber lease agreements and CWDM transponder equipment, which is not cost-effective for a temporary project.

MPLS services typically involve longer-term provider contracts and provisioning lead times that reduce flexibility for a fixed-duration migration project.

DWDM over dark fiber carries the highest capital and operational costs of all options due to dense optical equipment requirements, yielding poor ROI for a temporary DCI use case.

Metro Ethernet is typically provisioned as an Ethernet WAN service with month-to-month or short-term contracts, making it well-suited for a temporary project with a defined end date. It requires no capital investment in WDM equipment or long-term dark fiber leases, keeping total cost of ownership low for a 20-30 month window. This flexibility allows the service to be decommissioned without stranded assets once the migration completes.