Cisco steps up metro offering with DWDM system

(Telephony) Cisco has expanded its portfolio of optical solutions for metropolitan area networks by introducing the ONS 15540 extended services platform (ESP), a dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) system designed for both enterprise and service-provider networks.

According to the company, the ONS 15540 ESP can deliver the integration of data and storage networking, as well as information streaming, over an ultra-high bandwidth optical infrastructure and is capable of supporting any packet, on any wavelength, from any platform.

The metro space is becoming crucial, because it represents a “significant chunk” of the overall information network, says Carl Engineer, director of marketing for Cisco’s metropolitan services unit.

“Intelligence is moving to the edge of the network,” he says. “As services become more content-aware and content-rich … there’s a greater demand for service creation occurring at the edge, as the core becomes more a transport aggregation and simple transmission scheme.

“We believe the dark fiber available within the metro space is going to provide huge bandwidth at the edge of the network, providing customers with [the necessary] capacity to access these services. It’s what our IP + Optical strategy is all about—providing high-bandwidth connectivity using optical fibers and DWDM technologies to access all of these intelligent services at the end of the network.”

Cisco says it designed the ONS 15540 ESP to be both modular and scalable. The product will roll out in multiple phases, with future releases expected to offer features such as multiplexing mixed services on a single wavelength, switching at the wavelength or sub-wavelength level, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and OC-192c support.

The initial phase will support up to 32 protected wavelengths per fiber pair, and will operate at speeds ranging from 16 Mb/s to 2.5 Gb/s, for a total capacity up to 80 Gb/s per system. The ONS 15540 EPS contains 12 slots packaged in compact (24 inches tall) NEBS Level 3-compliant and rack-mountable chassis, which gives customers the ability to stack multiple units per rack.