Cyan unveils single-slot 100-Gbps line card

Packet-optical transport specialist Cyan has released the DTM 100G, a single-slot 100-Gbps transponder for its Z-Series platforms. Besides its small size, the optical transponder also offers significant flexibility through its ability to accept a variety of CFPs, thus accommodating multiple reaches and traffic types. At least one non-U.S. Tier 1 carrier appears interested in the technology, according to company sources.

Cyan designed the DTM-100G using off-the-shelf components, including a transponder module based on dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) with coherent detection, revealed CMO and Vice President of North American Sales Eric Clelland and Vice President Product Development Scott Pradels. Despite the company’s current focus on metro and regional applications for 100G, Cyan currently doesn’t have plans to come up with a 4x25G version of the transponder, Pradel said.

The unit is designed to accept a wide variety of client-side CFP optical transceivers, including SR10 (100 m), LR10 (2 km), LR4 (10 km), and ER4 (40 km) modules. It also features a DWDM interface that is fully C-Band tunable. In addition to 100-Gbps optical transport, the card also will support 100 Gigabit Ethernet and G.709 Optical Transport Network (OTN) OTU4 regeneration.

The DTM-100G also operates under Cyan’s Blue Planet software-defined network (SDN) umbrella (see “Cyan offers Blue Planet OpenFlow-based SDN capabilities”), which Clelland said makes the card among the first SDN-compatible 100-Gbps technologies.

The line card has already reached the field, with Great Plains Communications among the first customers.

“The flexibility and form factor of the DTM-100G are perfect for our network,” said John Greene, chief network engineer at Great Plains Communications, via a Cyan press release. “As we build out our network, we typically do not know how far our customers will be from our points of presence, and the optical reach flexibility inherent in the DTM-100G means that we don’t have to.”

Meanwhile, other carriers are putting the card through its paces. A Tier 1 carrier outside of the U.S. is an example; the carrier is not yet a Cyan customer, but Clelland expressed confidence the operator soon would be. Meanwhile, both Clelland and Pradels believe that, because of the card’s client-side flexibility, they will see some business from carriers interested in using the DTM-100 to generate 100-Gbps signals that would be carried by equipment from other vendors as alien wavelengths.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.