New Series 6000 all-optical large matrix switch delivers the highest performance, in a small form factor
Polatis, Inc. the performance leader in all-optical switch technology, today announced its new Series 6000 Optical Matrix Switch – a fully non-blocking all-optical 192×192 singlemode matrix switch. The Series 6000 brings the Polatis switching technology standard of low-loss and high-performance to a larger switch matrix size in a compact 3U form factor. The product will be demonstrated at the OFC/NFOEC show in Los Angeles next week. Production shipments will commence in the 2nd quarter of 2012.
The Series 6000 will be deployed across a wide number of applications ranging from government surveillance/secure communications to data center virtualization, video feed distribution, satellite analog RF/optical uplink management, network testing and more. To meet the requirements of these applications, the Series 6000 brings Polatis’ proven performance benefits of very low insertion loss, compact size, low power draw and fast switching speeds to a larger switch size at competitive pricing. The new switch is available in symmetric (NxN) and asymmetric (MxN) matrix configurations, or in unique customer configurable (NxCC) arrangement allowing any-to-any port connections.
“The capabilities Polatis brings to optical switching are unique and critical for defense, intelligence and secure communications applications,” said Dave Eisemann, VP of Engineering at Transformational Security, LLC, a firm providing security and engineering solutions to US government agencies such as Defense and Intelligence along with Fortune 1000 companies.
“Extremely high optical performance with the lowest possible signal loss, no crosstalk, and transparent optical transmission is needed to preserve signal characteristics and link margins in government/defense applications,” Eisemann said. ”Polatis’ beam-steering technology is unmatched in this regard, an ideal solution which is now available in even higher fiber counts, with very low power consumption.”
DirectLight® Beam-Steering
Like the Polatis Series 1000 and Series 2000 (offering up to 96×96 non-blocking matrix), the Series 6000 is based on Polatis’ patented DirectLight® beam-steering technology which uses piezoelectric actuators to steer light directly between switch ports. “DirectLight is the industry benchmark for low-loss optical switching,” said Gerald Wesel, president and CEO of Polatis, Inc. “And it has been proven in the most challenging defense applications, in data center and telecom environments, and by major network equipment manufacturers in automated testing of optical subsystems. Polatis offers the highest performance commercially available optical switching technology, with port counts ranging from 4×4 to 192×192, at competitive prices.”
Efficient Protection Switching
The Series 6000 switch enhances network availability by enabling fast automatic recovering from network equipment failures. Unlike other switching technologies, its DirectLight beam-steering allows optical connections to be switched with or without light on the fiber. This unique capability enables pre-provisioning paths for disaster recovery, protection switching, and intelligent network monitoring/testing over lit or dark fiber. DirectLight supports truly transparent connections and can switch bi-directional and transient signals used in PON, FTTx and other transmission systems.
Carrier Class Reliability
The Series 6000 switch’s distributed architecture eliminates any single points of failure and includes dual hot swap power supplies and network interface cards. Switch software can be easily upgraded in the field without affecting in-service switch operations. SNMP, TL1 and SCPI command languages allow for seamless integration with higher-level network management systems or test equipment controllers. Each switch also has a user-friendly HTML web browser GUI interface that can be used to provision, monitor and control the switch.
Optional Power Meters and Optical Taps
The Series 6000 switch includes options for integrated optical power monitoring or optical monitoring taps on every fiber and protection switching on every connection. These integrated features are ideal for network monitoring, protection switching, data mirroring and intrusion detection, and for many system test applications. Switches can also be customized to incorporate a wide variety of passive and active components to suit individual customer needs.
Visitors to OFC/NFOEC 2012, March 4-8, in Los Angeles can see the Series 6000 optical switches demonstrated in the Polatis booth #2841T. Also at OFC, Rich Jensen, Director of Architecture at Polatis, will present the whitepaper, “Highly Scalable OXC-based Contentionless ROADM Architecture with Reduced Network Implementation Costs”, on Wednesday, March 7th, at 2:45 p.m. in room 409A&B