News | August 21, 2008

Ekinops Raises The Performance Bar For Optical Transport

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Raising the performance bar on transport of optical traffic, Ekinops today introduced a low-cost, long haul solution that can economically carry 80 WDM channels a distance of 2,000km. Ekinops, a leading provider of next generation optical transport, CWDM, DWDM, and aggregation solutions for service providers and enterprise networks, announced that it is delivering these capabilities on the T-Chip, Ekinops' transport on a chip technology that is the foundation of the Ekinops 360 transport platform.

Delivery on the firmware programmable T-Chip enables this capability to be utilized by a number of modules that take advantage of T-Chip today, many of which will be field upgradeable. With this new capability, Ekinops continues to demonstrate the Dynamic nature of the T-Chip (and hence the 360 system) and its ability to protect a customer's investment by allowing new, differentiating capabilities to be applied to the system and even modules they have purchased without a major redesign or need to deploy new equipment.

The new long haul solution uses Ekinops' DynaFEC™ forward error correction technology, which boosts performance, enabling longer transmission distances with lower-power transmitters and amplifiers. It further enhances the capabilities of the Ekinops 360 transport platform. Today, the Ekinops 360 platform aggregates and transports Ethernet (Lan Phy, Wan Phy), Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, Escon, HD-SDI video, SD-SDI video, and ASI video client protocols with the ability to quickly develop new client protocol support ahead of the market with the dynamic firmware programmable T-Chip.

DynaFEC is built into the Ekinops T-Chip, the heart of the Ekinops 360 system. The T-Chip, which Ekinops unveiled in June, can be programmed for virtually any functionality. It is a dynamic, firmware programmable, field upgradeable chip that not only allows Ekinops to design, manufacture and deliver equipment to customers more quickly and at a lower cost, but also reduces power requirements.

"DynaFEC is clearly leading the industry in forward error correction," said Rob Adams, Vice President of Global Marketing and Product Line Management for Ekinops. "We don't know of anyone else who has been able to accomplish this outside the lab. We have been able to implement it quickly because of our powerful and unique T-Chip. We can pack advanced capabilities into the T-Chip and bring them to market in far less time than our competitors."

DynaFEC offers a number of FEC options that can be programmatically made available to Ekinops line cards allowing for up to a 10 to 12 dB gain, enabling the longest transmission distances between amplifiers. Ekinops can transmit 300km without any in-line amplification, with full channel counts and its new FEC capabilities significantly reduce the number of in-line amplifiers needed for long reach routes up to 2,000km.

"Not only does this industry leading DynaFEC technology enable service providers to carry traffic a greater distance at lower cost, but it also works very well in lower quality fiber environments," said Rob Adams. "Also, because of our forward error correction capabilities, when we do need inline amplification, we are able to use less costly metro-grade amplifiers and hold down equipment costs for carriers."

"Ekinops is now one of the few equipment providers that can offer a comprehensive, multi-reach system that is cost effective for all applications," remarked Didier Bredy, CEO of Ekinops. "The Ekinops 360 fills carriers' needs from access aggregation through metro, regional and now long haul transport."

About Ekinops

Ekinops is a leading designer and supplier of optical transport equipment for service providers and enterprise networks. Our CWDM, DWDM and aggregation solutions are used by major carriers to build Metro, Regional and Long Haul networks. Ekinops' optical transport platform relies on an innovative, programmable architecture that substantially lowers the cost and power requirements for building high speed optical networks. Using Ekinops' 360 carrier-grade products, operators can increase transport capacity over Fiber, Ethernet, CWDM, DWDM, SONET/SDH, Video, Escon, Fibre Channel and IP networks. The company is headquartered in Lannion, France, with sales offices in Europe, the US and Asia. More information about Ekinops is available at www.ekinops.net

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