Echola Systems Layer1 (aka Physical Layer, All Optical, OOO) optical switch come in three types: 1xN (1x1, 1x2, 1x4, 1x8...), n(1xN) and MxN switches. Since these are Layer1 switches, you don't need expensive transceivers (for eg. 10GE SFP) for each port to connect to similar devices. The switching happens at physical layer, so it can work with any speed or protocol (for instance, 10GE, 40GE, 100GE, 10GFC, 16GFC, 20GFC, 40G SONET/SDH/OTN...).

The 1xN switches have single duplex input and N duplex outputs. The light can be switched from the input to any one of the output at any given time. So it can be used to share one expensive optical device with multiple (N) optical devices. The n(1xN) switches are similar to 1xN but has many such 1xN switches in single enclosure. The fiber-cut switches are special n(1x1) switches used for simulating fiber cuts scenarios. MxN on the other hand is a non-blocking matrix switch with M inputs and N outputs. Light can be switched from any input to any output port. The MxN and some configurations of n(1xN) type switches are used in optical patch panel automation applications.

Echola Systems Layer1 optical switches allows users to configure, control and monitor the device from remote using any standard internet browser, a command line interface via telnet or SSH. The notification is supported through Syslog. The switch can be automated using TCL based application programming interface from any user applications. Secured access through VPN is also possible. All of 1xN switches comes with Single Mode and Multimode versions. Normally number of ports are configurable but there is maximum ports limit for each type of switch. The following are list of some standard configurations, for custom configurations and price, contact sales@echola.com.