Coriant has unveiled the 7100 Pico, a compact packet-optical transport platform optimised for service enablement at the edge of metro networks.
The 7100 Pico extends the reach of the existing Coriant 7100 product family that it acquired from Tellabs, which also includes the 7100 Optical Transport System (OTS) and 7100 Nano.
Uwe Fischer, Coriant’s CTO, describes the product as “the missing link” that extends packet-optical functionality to the very edge of the network. The box is aimed at a broad range of edge services and applications, including data centre interconnection, flexible business services, mobile backhaul, and SONET/SDH network migration.
“With the continued growth in cloud computing, video-on-demand and mobile broadband, network operators are facing a dramatic increase in bandwidth demand and highly unpredictable traffic patterns at the network edge,” the company said. “By extending proven packet optical transport flexibility and efficiency to the metro edge, the 7100 Pico helps our customers cost-effectively aggregate and transport diverse traffic and protocols, seamlessly scale to 100G, and dynamically adapt to next-generation service requirements.”
Coriant says the 7100 Pico was designed using the same layer-agnostic switching philosophy used across the rest of its product portfolio. The 7100 Pico’s high-density and low-power 2-rack-unit (2RU) design includes a distributed processing architecture that allocates system processing across service modules, significantly reducing upfront costs and improving system reliability, the company claims.
The 7100 Pico supports the same service modules as the 7100 product family, but in a smaller chassis. The available modules include the ultra-high density 10G and 100G transponders and muxponders; the innovative OTN add/drop multiplexer (ADM) on-a-blade; and the high-density, feature-rich packet switching module. Having the full range of service interface options ensures easy and cost-effective scalability from 1G to 10G to 100G, the company claims.
The 7100 Pico can be deployed as a standalone network appliance or extend service-enabling capabilities in existing networks comprised of the 7100 Nano, 7100 OTS, Coriant mTera Universal Transport Platform, or Coriant hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform. The 7100 Pico can also be deployed as an aggregation device for the Coriant 7090 Packet Transport Platform and the Coriant 8600 Smart Router series.
The platform supports both AC and DC power options to allow it to be easily adopted in data centre network environments, where there is no centralised DC power. Coriant anticipates that one of the most common applications for the 7100 Pico will be as a pizza-box-type application for data centre interconnect.
In addition to enabling new services at the metro edge, the 7100 Pico platform supports Coriant’s approach to software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV). The platform can be deployed as part of Coriant’s Dynamic Optical Cloud, which combines a flexible transport infrastructure, dynamic network control based on the Coriant Transcend SDN Solution and integrated network planning to create ‘a powerful toolkit’ for next-generation service innovation.
The 7100 Pico is available now.
