21 July 2003 Richardson, TX Lightwave -- Fujitsu Network Communications Inc., today announced new enhancements for its FLASHWAVE 7420 managed wavelength services platform. These enhancements, which include a new slimline chassis and variable-rate transponder, increase service provisioning options for metro carriers and are available immediately. The FLASHWAVE 7420 platform supports voice, video, data, storage or any access application between 8 Mbits/sec and 10 Gbits/sec.
Designed for high-speed, feeder connections between customer premises sites and metro DWDM rings, the FLASHWAVE 7420 slimline chassis is a compact (two-service slot) version of the standard (eight-service slot) chassis. The slimline chassis is ideal for lower channel count applications, allowing metro carriers to provide the capacity and service transparency of DWDM directly to enterprise and small/medium office locations.
The slimline chassis can be mounted in both 19" and 23" racks and is only three rack units (5.25") in height. The slimline chassis supports distances up to 120 km without regeneration; optional integrated erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and regenerators enable signal transport up to 300 km. Channel cards are interchangeable between the slimline and standard FLASHWAVE 7420 chassis, reducing sparing cost and complexity for network operators.
The new variable-rate transponder interface provides protocol transparent, multi-rate 3R (re-amplification, re-shaping, and re-timing) capabilities for Fibre Channel (1 Gbit/sec and 2 Gbits/sec), ESCON, FICON, Coupling Link, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, SONET/SDH, ATM or other popular rates from 8 Mbits/sec toI2.5 Gbits/sec. All other rates from 8 Mbits/sec to 2.5 Gbits/sec, including Fiber Distributed Data Interface, Sysplex Timer and various proprietary signals, are also supported via integrated optical 2R (re-amplification and re-shaping) capabilities. Both normal and extended reach versions are available to support network spans up to 200 km.
The standard FLASHWAVEU7420 chassis with eight service slots is optimized for metro networking between central offices and points-of-presence. This chassis supports 32 protected or 64 unprotected DWDM channels in point-to-point, linear add/drop, ring and meshed network topologies with up to 10 nodes. The system is easily adjusted to respond to service changes or network growth, while keeping operational costs down. The provisioning of any service at any speed is made more cost-effective by the system's muxponder cards, which allow up to 128 services to be transported over a single fiber pair.