Metro optical systems company Sorrento Networks International has launched a compact 100G optical transport product for enterprise and data centre markets at Broadband World Forum in London.
The ultra-compact GigaMux 3300 system is the latest addition to Sorrento’s GigaMux portfolio of products, and the first new product to be launched since the company was reborn earlier this year (see Sorrento restarts its metro optical business).
While some companies are looking to direction detection to provide low-cost 100G products for the metro market, Sorrento is aiming to drive down the price of coherent transmission. It hopes that a lower price point will prove attractive to service providers who wish to exploit coherent optics in the metro domain.
The advantages of coherent optics are compelling for this particular market, according to John Mitchell, director of product management for Sorrento. Smart coherent optics supports fibre spans of up to 1500km without regeneration, in addition to offering simplified network design using electronic dispersion compensation to enable operation over low quality fibre plant. Up to 80 100G channels can be supported per fibre using GigaMux 3000 and GigaMux 3200 photonic filters.
“100G speeds are rapidly becoming the new normal for bandwidth services, and the GigaMux 3300 offers an easy and cost-effective path for service providers to achieve this,” said Mitchell.
Sorrento says its platform is unique both its low cost of deployment and compact footprint compared to other products on the market. “By being very focused [in our product offering], we can be very efficient in our investments, we can trim our cost base and keep our supply chain very lean,” said Mitchell.
The GigaMux 3300 comes in two versions: a two-rack-unit (RU) chassis with three card slots, and a 5RU chassis that supports up to eight slots. A variety of cards are available offering 10G, 40G and 100G ports, with 100G line-side transmission via a CFP form factor optical module.
The new platform allows current users of the older Sorrento Networks GigaMux 3200 product to multiplex existing 10G services to 100G, freeing wavelengths channels for future use. In addition, the coherent nature of the GigaMux 3300 signal enables 100G traffic to ride seamlessly over spare channels in existing GigaMux 3200 fibre infrastructure without further plant re-engineering.
The GigaMux 3300 is available to order now.
Sorrento Networks is showing the GigaMux 3300 at Broadband World Forum, London, booth D11.