XKL touts DarkStar DWDM appliance success

XKL LLC, which focuses on optical transport systems for enterprise and data center interconnect applications, says that its recently unveiled 1RU DarkStar DWDM appliances have gained significant traction. The company has offered fiber-optic network systems under the DarkStar brand for several years (see, for example, "XKL unveils DarkStar DSM optical transport system"). But the appliance elements of the line represented the company's strongest-growing product area in the fourth quarter of last year, XKL asserts.

The low-power appliances are designed to offer 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps of connectivity for enterprise network expansion, service providers, and cloud migration in both dark fiber and lit services scenarios. XKL has optimized the DarkStar DWDM appliances for enterprise manageability, however.

"Many of the recent cloud outages around the world were due to a lack of manageability," commented Chad Lamb, director of engineering at XKL. "That is, network owners, when faced with upgrading firmware or updating software in their server, router, switch or transport nodes, were unable to achieve these improvements without bringing down parts of the network – destabilizing service for millions of users. What's worse, it often means taking the network out of service entirely for ‘preventive maintenance.'"

Lamb says the DarkStar DWDM appliances are designed for upgrade and maintenance without a hard reboot, specialized optical engineering, or affecting customer traffic. The systems are engineered to be installed in less than an hour.

XKL demonstrated the ability to support 400-Gbps of capacity at last year's Lightwave Optical Innovation Summit.

For more information on optical transport systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.