Ekinops, a newcomer to the U.S. market in 2006, announced this week its new 10-gigabit transponder and protocol converter, which the France-based manufacturer will display at its first stateside trade show, GLOBALCOMM, next month.
“Carriers have deployed SONET, but customers are not asking for SONET services. They are asking for IP services,” said Jonathan Amir, vice president of sales for the Americas. “With this product, they can connect off-the-shelf 10-gigabit LAN switches to SONET. They don’t have to deploy a new network.”
Ekinops’ new PM1001PC overcomes the problem of two incompatible specifications for 10-gigabit Ethernet. While the WAN PHY operates at data rates compatible with SONET OC192 and SDH STM64, 10gigE LAN PHY does not. The PM1001PC converts 10gigE LAN PHY to WAN PHY so service providers can use their installed base of SONET/SDH and DWDM networks to transport 10gigE traffic. The PM1001PC eliminates the need for expensive router interfaces by encapsulating 10gigE packets into SONET/SDH frames compatible with OC192/STM64 bit rate, which is a little less than 10gbps.
PM1001 also includes an LH model with embedded forward error-correction technology to transport 10gigE over longer distances without the need for repeaters. Amir said the LH extends 10gigE signals up to 80km without amplification, 200km with pre-amplifiers and 700km with in-line amplifiers.
The PM1001 is the latest addition to a series of TDM aggregation solutions designed to aggregate traffic over gigabit wavelengths in an effort to reduce the overall cost of deploying optical networks. The PM series of devices can be deployed directly over fiber or in lit WDM or SONET networks.
Typical applications include aggregating traffic from ELAN services, storage area networks or DSLAMs, Amir said. In the latter scenario, Amir explained, carriers typically would use CWDM. TDM aggregation is more affordable, he said, explaining that the PM1008, which aggregates 8gigE over one OC192 equivalent lambda, costs about $25,000 while an 8-port CWDM system is about $45,000.
Ekinops www.ekinops.net
