Fujitsu Network Communications used last month's OFC 2016 to roll out a variety of 1RU blades within its 1FINITY software-defined networking (SDN) friendly optical transport portfolio. The new blades, grouped within Transport, Lambda, Switch, and Access functional families, are designed to enable network operators to deploy only the functionality they need for a given application.
The communications systems vendor launched the 1FINITY line with the T100 blade, designed to provide basic optical transport functionality for metro data center interconnect applications (see "Fujitsu targets data center interconnect with first 1FINITY optical transport platform"). Part of the Transport family of blades, the T100 will be joined by the T200, a muxponder for long-haul data center interconnect at 100 Gbps and beyond. The T200 supports multiple modulation formats to cover coherent transmission applications of various reaches and data rates. A third member of the Transport line, the T300, will target high-density metro and long-haul transport applications, with support of 10-, 40-, and 100-Gbps client-side data rates.
The Switch blade line currently comprises a single offering, the S100. Fujitsu has positioned the blade as a high-density Ethernet switch with "white box" application support. The blade will perform 10GbE to 100GbE aggregation of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services with a bidirectional switching capacity of 1.2 Tbps.
The 1FINITY Lambda family will begin with several ROADM blades that operators can combine in multiple configurations. For example, a small colorless and directionless ROADM configuration that would support up to four degrees and 128 clients would consist of the L100 blade (a twin 1×9 WSS ROADM-on-a-blade) and an L110 blade (a 4×16 splitter-coupler). For requirements needing up to 12 degrees, operators can pair the L110 blade with the L120 blade, which is a twin 12×9 WSS optical switch. The L200 blade can complement these applications to provide bidirectional intermediate line amplification (ILA) of up to 35 dB.
The Access family will support a variety of PON-based options. Fujitsu displayed a 10G EPON blade, called the A100, at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo last October (see "Fujitsu debuts 10G EPON"). However, the company is now recasting that blade, with an eye toward support of multiple PON options, including NG-PON2, sources at the Fujitsu Network Communications booth at OFC 2016 said.
The T100 is available and has been the subject of more than 15 demonstrations and trials. The T200, L100 and L110, and S100 blades should become available sometime this quarter, with the T300 following shortly thereafter.
Additional blades in each family will also be forthcoming, the booth sources said. This includes the S200, a micro switch that the company also expects will have white box applications.
The fact that the 1FINITY line can support pay-as-your-grow expansion in smaller nodes should prove particularly popular among Tier 2 and 3 telcos as well as cable multiple systems operators (MSOs), the company sources predicted. They also believe the blades will find application as complements to fielded systems (such as Fujitsu's FLASHWAVE family) to promote an evolutionary approach to SDN deployment.
The 1FINITY line and Fujitsu's VIRTUORA SDN software platform received Elite Score status in the 2016 Lightwave Innovation Reviews program.
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Stephen Hardy | Editorial Director and Associate Publisher
Stephen Hardy has covered fiber optics for more than 15 years, and communications and technology for more than 30 years. He is responsible for establishing and executing Lightwave's editorial strategy across its digital magazine, website, newsletters, research and other information products. He has won multiple awards for his writing.
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