Actually, sales and income are, but you won't notice that until after the fact, will you.
Cutting Fiber Down to Size
Osicom's Gigamux EPC mux lets carriers deliver services directly over DWDM links
Adding DWDMs in metropolitan fiber rings cuts bandwidth costs. And now carriers can chop them down even more, thanks to the Gigamux EPC from Osicom Technologies Inc. It's the only dense wavelength-division multiplexer (DWDM) that can directly to corporate customers.
In current metro DWDMs, carriers need expensive Sonet add-drop multiplexers (ADMs) to split wavelengths into channels for transparent LAN services. But Gigamux works without ADMs, so "you start with a 20 percent savings on capital cost,"explains Baksheesh Ghuman, senior product manager at Electric Lightwave Inc. (Vancouver, Wash.), a competitive local exchange carrier planning to test the product. Management costs also come down. And the savings in both areas can be passed on to corporate customers.
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M to Multiple ed links ngle gth The Gigamux is deployed on the customer premises, where it adds and drops up to 32 OC48 (2.5-Gbit/s) wavelengths onto a fiber ring. It holds up to 64 OC3 (155-Mbit/s) EPC (electrical photonic concentration) cards, which can split each wavelength into up to 16 subchannels. The cards furnish fast Ethernet, FDDI, and ATM interfaces. What's more, they are protocol-independent and automatically recognize the bit rates coming in, which speeds configuration.
Downsides? Osicom (Santa Monica, Calif.) couldn't supply any Gigamux users. Furthermore, carriers already using Sonet ADMs will need to junk that pricey gear if they want to take full advantage of the Osicom product. Competitors like Cambrian Systems Corp. (Kanata, Ontario) say that means losing Sonet's performance monitoring and maintenance features. But like all other metro DWDM vendors, Cambrian forces carriers to use a separate Sonet ADM to split wavelengths into manageable pieces. Gigamux costs $120,000 for 2 wavelengths and $1.5 million for 32. Splitting up wavelengths costs an additional $2,800 per 155-Mbit/s subrate channel.
Osicom; 310-581-4030, www.osicom.com |
