XKL’s DarkStar technology selected by the Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution initiated updating its legacy infrastructure with XKL’s innovative DWDM optical transport technology. The Smithsonian initially acquired multiple DWDM DarkStar systems that will be utilized in multiple point-to-point configurations connecting the Smithsonian headquarters to its collocation facility Equinix within the data centers region of Ashburn, Virginia.

Tuesday, 15th May 2018 Posted 6 years ago in by Phil Alsop

The ability to deploy and manage optical transport networks themselves without an optical engineer was one of the deciding factors for choosing XKL technology. Along with ease of management, the DarkStar family of products offers low cost per port and no licensing fees that contribute to the appeal of the solution.

The XKL DarkStar family of products offers incremental bandwidth growth with a modular pay-as-you-grow scalable 1RU chassis-based system, each port is soft configurable on a per port basis. Along with the port flexibility, each unit offers an integrated digital ROADM, which allows any port to any port or any port to any wave mapping. In addition to flexible connectivity, multiple protection schemes are available to secure active connectivity were some determining factors when Smithsonian decided on XKL’s solution.

“Our DarkStar solutions are ideal for network operators with several disparate physical points-of-presence and robust bandwidth requirements,” comments Chad Lamb, Chief Systems Architect for XKL. “Government and research institutions must continually transport massive workloads across their networks and XKL offers a solution that serves this need rapidly, while minimizing resource consumption.”

“We identified that we could replace our current optical infrastructure at half the cost with twice the capacity and still expand capacity in the future through the implementation of the XKL DMD-A (DarkStar Mux/Demux - amplified) allowing for greater utilization of each optical link,” adds Martin Beckman, Director IT Engineering for the Smithsonian. “Configurable in a manner as simple as a common network switch, the XKL technology is simple to use and allows us to get the most capacity out of our network.”