Help from SmartOptics \:D/
We in :Net are very lucky to have SmartOptics with us on our side.
We were desperate in need for WDM optical transceivers, and a couple of phone calls later they confirmed availability on the wavelengths we needed. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that they actually think TG is so awesome that they wanted to lend us the transceivers free of charge.
SmartOptics is a company specializing in high quality optical transceivers and WDM systems. One of their newest products is the embedded WDM system m:series ;
http://www.smartoptics.com/products/mseries/
This is a 1RU WDM system which supports everything from 100Mbps to 100Gbps, that scales up to a 200km reach and without the need for additional DWDM equipment. Aside from the obvious benefit from the pizza box design is the system very modular, with hot-swappable redundant PSU’s and replaceable network management module.
For more detailed information about the m:series system and pictures;
http://smartoptics.biz/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mseries_web_1hr.pdf
*A little bit general information about WDM:
*WDM is short for wavelength-division multiplexing. What it actually does is to combine more than one data channel through one fiber cable. You can for example push 16x fiber connections through one long range fiber cable. This possible because the optical transceivers “talks” on different wavelengths.
In general you have two different types of systems;
- CWMD (Coarse WDM) — the passive system that allows for a maximum of 20 channels between 1270nm and 1610nm with 20nm channel spacing.
- DWDM (Dense WDM) — the active system in its most common implementation allows for a maximum of 40 channels between 1554.54nm and 1586.62nm with 100GHz (about 0.8nm) channel spacing.
This is a picture illustrating how a WDM system works;
(Picture borrowed from kitz.co.uk)
If you found this interesting and want to learn more, read more on Wikipedia;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing
If you need quality optical transceivers or a quality WDM-system, contact SmartOptics. 🙂