ECI adds 400G blade to Apollo packet-optical transport platform

Optical transport systems vendor ECI Telecom has unveiled support for 400-Gbps optical transmission in its Apollo line of packet-optical transport systems. The new capabilities come in the form of a 400G flexible grid blade that enables operators to configure a mix of 10G, 40G, and 100G on the client side and choose the required speed/reach on the line side.

The blade will offer a power consumption of 0.75 W/Gbps.

ECI says the 400G blade supports flexible allocation of transmission rate and spectrum based on service, preference, or distance. This makes the new capabilities applicable to metro as well as long–haul fiber-optic networks, the company asserts. Integrated OSNR monitoring helps optimize the rate to channel conditions. ECI believes this capability can enable networks leveraging software-defined networking (SDN) concepts to automatically adapt optical transmission to dynamic traffic patterns.

"The evolution to rates beyond 100G is required to support continued traffic growth," said Jimmy Mizrahi, head of ECI's Portfolio Business Lines. "With the 400G blade, not only is ECI improving the transmission rate of the fiber by two, we are actually further increasing the spectral efficiency by 33% with the use of flex grid."

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