Polatis CEO Talks SDN-Enabled Optical Switching

Gerald Wesel
Gerald Wesel

What do you hope to gain in the market by teaming with WWT?

WWT provides network design, integration, implementation and support excellence that is unmatched in the networking industry. Polatis applies its all optical class-leading performance to provide dynamic fiber cross-connects for software-defined telecommunications, data center, government, test and video networks.

The new partnership provides a win-win for WWT and Polatis customers by delivering and supporting integrated solutions that require all optical switching and highly resilient optical networks. WWT also has built a world class Advanced Technology Center where customers can leverage an ecosystem to design and demonstrate proof of concept solutions and deploy them. 

What makes your Series 6000 optical switches stand out in the market?

Polatis offers optical switching solutions with unmatched optical performance and system reliability at a competitive price point when compared to all other optical switching technologies. Polatis optical solutions, including the Series 6000, deliver the world's lowest loss SDN-enabled all-optical switching solutions for remote fiber-layer provisioning, protection, monitoring, reconfiguration and test. The field-proven DirectLight dark fiber optical matrix switch technology scales from 4x4 to 192x192 ports with typical loss below 1dB.

Can you explain what you mean by Polatis delivers the world's "lowest loss SDN-enabled" all-optical switching solution? Why is that unique in the marketplace?

Loss in the optical switching sense refers to loss of optical signal strength as the traffic passes through the switch. The lower the loss, the higher the network performance.  This is important because as traffic passes through multiple "hops" the signal strength degrades; without an extremely low loss switch, amplifiers and repeaters must be added to certain points in the networks to boost the signal.  With an extremely low loss switch, it is cost-effective because no amplifiers and repeaters are necessary – this also decreases complexity in the network as fewer network elements are required to maintain performance.

SDN-enabled refers to the ability for network operators to manage the fiber layer, the very foundation of the network, and higher layers in the network all under one management system.  This is very important, and a catalyst for the current growth in optical networking, because all parts of the network can be managed as one system -- i.e. when routers and switches become congested, dynamic reconfiguration of fibers resources can quickly ease that congestion.  Previously, as isolated parts of the network, this was virtually impossible.  

By virtue of its architecture, Polatis has the lowest loss switches in the industry and has invested heavily in the SDN paradigm.