OJ Johnston

Recent Posts

Upgrading to 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet? Consider the Implications on your MultiMode Fiber Infrastructure

Posted by OJ Johnston on Mon, May 11, 2015 @ 17:05 PM

While many enterprises are considering the move to a 40/100G ethernet infrastructure, often they overlook the impact of remaining with a multimode fiber infrastructure. While there is little difference in the infrastructure requirements of 10G ethernet for single-mode fiber and multimode fiber infrastructures, there is an exponential difference in 40/100G ethernet infrastructures. Many people tout the economics of MMF vs SMF lasers as the key reason for remaining with their MMF infrastructure; however, the savings achieved there will likely be erased by the increased cost of the passive optical infrastructure.

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Topics: multimode fiber, optical taps, single mode fiber

Mobile Backhaul - Strategies for Increasing Bandwidth to Cell Sites

Posted by OJ Johnston on Mon, Jul 22, 2013 @ 17:07 PM

As the use of mobile applications and services that require increasingly more bandwidth continues to grow, wireless service providers must find cost-effective and efficient methods for meeting the bandwidth demand. Legacy transport networks are no longer capable of adequately serving today’s cell sites. Newer technologies such as GPON, WDM-PON, and Ethernet over CWDM/DWDM are all well-suited to cost-effectively address the growing bandwidth needs of wireless service providers. Regardless of the technology used, M2 Optics’ SplitLight product is an integral part of the solution.
 

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Topics: WDM, PON

Enterprise and MDU/MTU PON – Rack’em, But Don’t Stack’em

Posted by OJ Johnston on Tue, Apr 9, 2013 @ 17:04 PM

Currently, one of the challenges in deploying new, higher speed services to both enterprise customers as well as MDU/MTU customers is how to deliver these services using the least amount of space possible, while maintaining network flexibility and service quality.  M2 Optics’ recent release of the SplitLighttm High-Density Platform (HDP) enables unprecedented space savings and enhanced flexibility without sacrificing performance.

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Topics: WDM, PON

Passive Optical Networks – Moving Beyond the LGX Form-Factor

Posted by OJ Johnston on Wed, Apr 3, 2013 @ 17:04 PM

Traditionally, products have gone down the path of modularity for two reasons: cost and/or ease of replacement without effecting existing services.  When the LGX form factor was first created for optical splitters, it made sense to have a modular approach for the first reason and to a lesser extent, the latter reason.  When optical splitter modules were first put into the LGX form factor, the cost per splitter was considerably higher than it is today. Therefore, inserting modules into a chassis became a cost effective way to “grow” as needed.  At the same time, the quality of those modules was not as high nor as repeatable as it is today, so despite any changes being service effecting (passive elements are not capable of protection switching around an outage) having the ability to replace the modules was also a key advantage.

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Topics: PON, optical taps

Best Practices for Network Monitoring Traffic Capture

Posted by OJ Johnston on Thu, Dec 20, 2012 @ 18:12 PM

In recent years, companies have shown the benefits of “copying” and sending traffic from network backbones to purpose-built monitoring devices…no interference with the existing, “live” traffic and the traffic can be analyzed in real-time or stored for later playback. However, the best approaches to “copying” and sending the traffic to be monitored has been a source of contention.  As 40/100G becomes more prevalent, how the traffic is accessed will become increasingly important.

Initially, the Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) ports were used to deliver copies of traffic to analyzers, but this has posed several problems at the 1G and 10G data rates, which likely will increase exponentially with 40/100G:

  • SPAN ports are part of the switch/router and operate in much the same way as typical ports, so the data is not always an exact copy
     
  • Traffic congestion both on the router and on the SPAN port itself can result in increased latency or the traffic to be dropped completely
     
  • Relying on a device that could be creating the problem to help identify it can be a self-defeating exercise
     
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Topics: optical taps

Reducing Rack Space with New, High-Density Optical Taps

Posted by OJ Johnston on Mon, Oct 15, 2012 @ 17:10 PM

As virtualization and cloud applications become more and more prevalent in Data Centers, POPs, Head-ends, and Central Offices, the available rack space needed to house the equipment for these applications is shrinking.  While the space needed to store, process, route, or switch the data becomes more compact, one thing that remains difficult to reduce is the physical layer infrastructure. As traffic enters or exits a facility, most providers want the capability to monitor what is being delivered or sent to/from their site. At the larger sites, this data traffic is riding on fiber, and in many cases, there are a number of fibers coming into or out of a given site. To be able to accurately monitor this traffic, a passive optical tap is used to duplicate the traffic and send it to a monitoring device that can analyze the header information native to the traffic type.  In the past, these optical taps were relatively expensive and bulky. Even today, most vendors cannot provide more than 24 taps in a single 1RU footprint. 

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Topics: optical fiber, optical taps