Ekinops doubles capacity, increase capabilities the Ekinops 360

FEBRUARY 22, 2008 -- Ekinops (search for Ekinops) has integrated a number of new features into its Ekinops 360 platform. Its enhanced capabilities are designed to provide carriers with a highly flexible, compact, and powerful system. The new features target improved operational productivity while helping lower capital expenditures.

The Ekinops 360 is a carrier-class optical transport platform designed for metro, regional, and long-haul optical networks. It is based on a programmable architecture (FPGA) and offers optical transport, DWDM, CWDM, and amplification for long-haul transmission as well as multi-protocol aggregation (Ethernet, SONET/SDH, Fibre Channel).

The following new features are being released:

• Tunable lasers: Ekinops' tunable lasers are introduced to help carriers keep their sparing cost down, simplify network design, and lower operational costs. The tunable lasers can be tuned to match any wavelength, so that one card can replace an inventory of 80 cards with different DWDM channels.
  
• Raman amplification: Raman amplifiers increase transmission distances by 50 to 100 km (30 to 60 miles) while increasing the output capacity over each fiber. In some networks Raman amplification is the only way to achieve higher capacity.
  
• Gigabit Rings: Ekinops is enhancing its GbE ADM capabilities to include ring configurations. The 1008DC that was previously deployed in linear add/drop configurations will now support full ring networks. This enhancement is designed to enable carriers to deploy fully protected rings using only one fiber pair or a single fiber between nodes. Gigabit Ethernet traffic can be added and dropped independently at each node. This functionality significantly reduces the number of wavelengths needed to support such networks and is well suited for metro rings as well as DSLAM and mobile backhaul.
  
• ROADM: ROADMs allow carriers to remotely reconfigure, in real time, wavelengths in the network. ROADMs can be deployed in ring as well as mesh topologies and be used to dynamically allocate services while minimizing truck rolls.
  
• Increased capacity: Ekinops is substantially increasing the performance of the Ekinops 360 by doubling the number of supported channels from 40 to 80 on a single fiber. By moving to 50-GHz spacing between channels, Ekinops is able to double the number of channels while remaining in the C-Band. This choice leaves the door open for growth with additional L-Band channels in the future.