Motorola has introduced a new optical LAN solution aimed at bringing the savings inherent in passive optics to enterprise applications. At the same time, the company introduced a self-organizing version of its wireless Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology.
Motorola’s Passive Optical LAN (POL) system derives from the vendor’s experience supplying gigabit passive optical network (GPON) equipment for Verizon’s fiber-to-the-premises network, but the technology is equally suitable for cable operators looking to provide services to larger business customers, said Motorola senior director of marketing Steve Hersey.
Motorola’s POL is an all-fiber enterprise LAN connecting any stationary Ethernet-based device or system across the enterprise into the wide area network.
A typical enterprise LAN might require at least one large switch per floor – and often enough, several. The POL replaces the switches with a physically smaller passive optical splitter – an optical hub. The access switch that replaces the router used in typical LANs can serve up to 7,000 access points, frequently far more than the router it replaces, Hersey explained.
The natural results are savings on capex, opex, power and cooling that contribute to a vastly reduced total cost of ownership.
The economic justification for a POL is easiest, however, when a corporate customer is about to make a change of some sort, Hersey explained, for example, upgrading from Cat 5 to Cat 6 wiring, or even moving buildings.
POL can also be the means for unifying communications systems – bridging mobile and fixed communications. The system is secure, and because the architecture is relatively simple, installers can be quickly trained (Motorola provides training).
Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) has signed on as a global reseller of Motorola’s POL solutions.
Meanwhile, the company announced the launch of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) advanced self-organizing network (SON), designed to squeeze operational expenses from LTE networks before they’ve even been deployed.
Motorola’s SON is a 3GPP Release 8 standards-compliant system with new features, improved architecture and new algorithms the company said go beyond specifications in the 3GPP standards.
Motorola has wrung out cost savings by automating previously manual steps involved in planning, deploying, optimizing and operating the network. In addition to lowering the cost of planning and deploying LTE, the advanced algorithms and features of Motorola’s LTE SON solution will help the operator dynamically optimize its network for best performance and make it simpler and easier to manage.
