Cisco Systems continues to expand service densities on the Cisco ONS 15454 with the introduction of the high-density, eight-port OC-3/STM-1 card. The eight-port OC-3/STM-1 card offers twice the density of the current four-port OC-3/STM-1 card and enables service providers to expand the number of revenue-generating service interfaces from an existing or new Cisco ONS 15454 network element. Enterprise users and service providers can also take advantage of lower overall network infrastructure costs by reducing the number of chassis and interface cards for future network build-outs.The high-density, eight-port OC-3/STM-1 card provides eight transmit and eight receive optical interfaces on a single-width module. Each interface operates at the standard SONET/SDH (Telcordia GR-253-CORE and ITU G-703) 155.520-Mbps bit rate, intermediate/short-haul reach of 13 decibels (dB), over 1310-nanometer (nm) optics. Small form factor LC-style optical connectors provide the necessary density to terminate the eight signals on a single card. Each is angled down, relative to the faceplate, to reduce bend-related stress. Each OC-3/STM-1 port is provisionable to support unidirectional path switched ring (UPSR)/subnetwork connection protection (SNCP), 1+1 automatic protection switching (APS)/MSP, or unprotected operation, providing networking flexibility for building access rings or aggregating traffic from terminal devices such as routers, ATM switches, or other SONET network elements. The card supports both concatenated (STS-3c) and non-concatenated (VT-1.5, VC-11/-12, STS-1/AU-3, VC-4) signals to enable transport of high-bandwidth data traffic as well as lower-speed services. In SONET mode, the optical ports can be provisioned as STM-1 to enable the tunneling of SDH payloads over a SONET network. This enables North American service providers to transport SDH traffic from international cable landing points to customer sites.The high-density OC-3/STM-1 card incorporates faceplate-mounted LEDs to provide a quick visual check on the operational status at the card as well as the interface ports. A shelf-slot icon, a brown star, is printed on the faceplate to indicate the shelf slot where the card can be installed. The card is supported by the integrated Cisco ONS 15454 Transport Controller craft manager, which provides the user access for operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning for the system.