On 26/11/2025 19:31, Joel Busch wrote:
Hm not just the ones I checked then. I wonder why they aren't interested. Maybe not a big market, or they are waiting for IEEE standardization?
I've actually never asked the OEM's. My 1+1 suspicion would be that trying to drive 400G-ER4 PAM4 beyond 40km means they would need to get involved in optical planning for the customers as well. Moreover, the ER4 and ER4-Lite plugs are not so differently priced from the 400G-ZR+ coherent ones (within about US$1,000 - US$1,500 of each other). Since all the OEM's have some kind of 400G-ZR+ solution, I could see why they would be reluctant to support 400G-ER4 and ER4-Lite.
Interesting. I hadn't noticed this, probably because we only have three ER4 so far and no need for more until we get more routers :-)
It was between June - August, this year. The issue was due to an SOA shortage. Nearly every manufacturer was affected by this, on both the ER4 and ER4-Lite. Some manufacturers have EoL'ed the ER4-Lite builds, and are only focusing on ER4. So if you have access to ER4-Lite supply, you should take it all while you still can :-).
I'm not sure if you caught my main issue: It's not that ER4 lite uses a different grid from ER4, it's that ER4 lite from different manufacturers use different grids!
Flexoptix ER4 lite: 1304.6 nm, 1306.8 nm, 1309.1 nm, 1311.4 nm FS.com ER4 lite: 1295.56 nm, 1300.05 nm, 1304.58 nm, 1309.14 nm FiberMall ER4 lite: 1295.56 nm, 1300.05 nm, 1304.58 nm, 1309.14 nm
That is odd. Looks like Flex are the odd man out, here. The ones we use for our own network and sell via our hardware business are from Smartoptics. They are built similar to FS and FiberMall using 1296/1300/1305/1309nm wavelengths. For the ER4 ones we use and sell from Smartoptics also, they are running 1304/1306/1309/1311nm, which matches what you say Flex are using for ER4-Lite. I suspect the Flex numbers could be a simple documentation error where someone copied & pasted the ER4 numbers to the ER4-Lite page, but I could be wrong. I would write them and ask. Mark.