OpVista Inc. is today unveiling a new technology that, it hopes, will make it a player in the emerging 40-Gbit/s and 100-Gbit/s networking sector, and help it snare some bigger equipment vendors as partners.

OpVista Inc. is today unveiling a new technology that, it hopes, will make it a player in the emerging 40-Gbit/s and 100-Gbit/s networking sector, and help it snare some bigger equipment vendors as partners.

The new technology is Dense Multi-Carrier (DMC), which OpVista plans to showcase in a new system called the CX-8, the successor to the OpVista2000 optical transport box. OpVista is also going to offer its own 40-Gbit/s transponders to potential equipment-vendor partners.

Schemes for 40-Gbit/s transmission have been emerging for a few years now. Much of the talk focuses on multilevel modulation formats, which allow the transmission of more than one data bit per clock cycle. (See Mintera Challenges StrataLight in 40G Fight.)

OpVista's approach is a little different. DMC also uses a multilevel modem, but it adds the trick of multiple carriers of light -- that is, multiple wavelengths densely packed inside one ITU window.

OpVista claims the combination lets it send what are literally 10-Gbit/s signals that enable a data rate of 40 Gbit/s or, in future versions, 100 Gbit/s.

The major benefit to OpVista's approach is that it doesn't need any dispersion compensation. Plenty of companies are building 40-Gbit/s technologies that can run on 10-Gbit/s networks, but most of those methods have to manage dispersion in some way.

OpVista's DMC is different, the company claims, because it's indistinguishable at the optical layer from 10-Gbit/s transmissions.

OpVista does need wavelength stabilizers to keep those transmission carriers from drifting into each other. Even so, it's possible DMC could help bring down the cost of 40 Gbit/s.

"People are only using 40 Gbit/s where the alternative is to overbuild a segment with a whole new piece of gear," says Dana Cooperson, an analyst with Ovum RHK Inc. "This technology should help them build on a lot more spans, because it's cheaper."