Polatis Introduces 192 Fibre Single Sided All-Optical Switch for Datacentre and Telecom Networks

192xCC SDN-Enabled All-Optical switch with “any-to-any” connection capability provides a new level of flexibility that enables innovative datacentre and network architectures

Bedford, MA, Cambridge, UK and ECOC 2014, Cannes  – September 22, 2014 -- Polatis, the performance leader in all-optical matrix switches, today announced general availability of its new 192-fibre reconfigurable single mode optical switch, providing non-blocking SDN-enabled connectivity between any pair of fibre ports with typically just 1dB of path loss.
Conventional all-optical switches are dual-sided, making connections between a group of committed input ports on one side and a group of output ports on the other.  This design limits configurability in advanced network applications where new, flexible any-to-any port configurations can enable better network performance and more efficient use of capacity. The 192-fibre customer-configurable (192xCC) single-sided optical switch uniquely presents fibre ports which are uncommitted to input or output groups, allowing users the flexibility to make non-blocking connections between any of the 192 fibres.   Without rigidly-defined input and output ports, the same optical switch module can be used for any combination of symmetric (NxN) and asymmetric (NxM) switch configurations.
“The combination of software control and any-to-any port connectivity brings a new level of flexibility and choice to our customers for optimizing their fibre assets,” said Gerald Wesel, CEO of Polatis. “The 192xCC reconfigurable optical switch provides full fibre connectivity without affecting system budgets, opening up new possibilities in datacentre and telecom networks for optical layer provisioning, protection, monitoring and test.”
The 192xCC is the latest addition to the Polatis series 6000 family of optical switches, which are built using the patented, world-leading, Polatis DirectLight™ dark fibre optical switch technology.  As a result, the switch makes fully transparent connections with low loss and no back reflection entirely independent of the colour, direction, power level or protocol of traffic on the fibre.  This makes it ideal for fibre-lean environments that use bidirectional transmission, such as FTTx access networks and datacentres that employ single-fibre BiDi transceivers. 
“A 192-port single sided optical switch, with any port-to-any port connectivity, is a very versatile building block that increases the flexibility and graceful scalability of the overall metro node design in next-generation software-defined optical networks. These low-loss optical switches can be used in a multi-stage optical circuit switched layer to reduce costs and increase the scalability of future network core nodes,” said Prof David Payne of Trinity College Dublin and Coordinator for the European Framework 7 collaborative project DISCUS.
Polatis optical switches are ideal for software-defined network applications where connection loss, stability and reproducibility are critical. Visitors to ECOC 2014 in Cannes, France can check out the full line of OpenFlow-enabled Polatis products at stand #208, now including OpenDaylight support and can also see how Polatis helps to avoid elephants slowing down your software-defined network.