Tibit Communications has announced availability of a pluggable optical line terminal (OLT), the Tibit MicroPlug OLT. A network access device for 10 gigabit passive optical networking (PON), the MicroPlug OLT is intended to reduce the footprint, power consumption, cost and amount of application-specific hardware needed for network deployments.
The new OLT form factor is designed to enable switch vendors to extend their deployed portfolio of 10G switch ports to support 10G PON. Tibit's standards-based small-format pluggable (SFP+) solution is intended to reduce the physical footprint of chassis-based and card-based solutions by 95% and reduce power consumption by 75%.
"Our challenge was to do something never attempted in this industry - reduce an entire OLT, including an entirely new ASIC and 10G optics, into a standards-based pluggable form factor," said Richard Stanfield, CEO of Tibit. "The result is a product that saves an extraordinary amount of space and power, and we are encouraged by the strong market reception of this game-changing device."
The MicroPlug OLT is designed to support CORD (Central Office Rearchitected as a Datacenter), network functions virtualization (NFV), Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) and to replace legacy PON-specific hardware with a single network element. Multiple Tibit devices can operate in an MSO remote node enclosure.
Tibit's in-band-by-design architecture is designed to deploy in PON virtualization environments such as vOLT-HA (virtual OLT - Hardware Abstraction), DPoE (DOCSIS PON over Ethernet), and BAA (Broadband Access Abstraction). It's built to meet both 10G-EPON and 10G GPON (XGS-PON) standards in a single device - IEEE 1904.1 and ITU-T G.9807.1.
"We have been specifically interested in remotely deployable PON solutions for the MSO market," said Colin Buechner, managing director, Access Networks, of Liberty Global. "Much of the challenge in this market is reducing the power consumption and heat dissipation of PON equipment that must be housed in outdoor cabinets. Tibit's solution directly addresses these concerns and supports the acceleration of 10G PON rollouts."