Carrier Ethernet is a fundamental element of the Cisco® Evolved Programmable Network (EPN). This is a proven end-to-end network solution for video, mobile, and cloud, which can help customers increase revenue opportunities while reducing costs. It helps service providers develop a truly integrated, multidirectional network infrastructure in which all elements, from the core to the edge, access, aggregation, and data center, are intelligently linked and orchestrated to work together.

Over the years, fiber-based access has proven to be a cost-effective way to reach customer premises to deliver managed business and residential services. The Cisco ME 4600 Series Optical Line Terminal (OLT) portfolio offers an exceptionally broad and scalable solution that gives network service providers a flexible and costeffective approach for optical fiber access solutions over active or passive optical network architectures.

The Cisco ME 4600 Series Multiservice Optical Access Platform includes reliable modular OLT devices specifically designed for optical fiber network infrastructures in either point-to-point (P2P) or point-to-multipoint (P2MP) topologies. Ethernet or passive optical network (PON) technologies like Gigabit PON (GPON) are supported. Next-generation PON technologies like XG-PON1 (10GPON) and NG-PON2 (TWDM PON) will also be supported by the same Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT. The Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT can support any FTTx scenario, covering fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), fiber-to-the-building (FTTB), fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), fiber-to-the-cell (FTTc), and fiber-to-the-business (FTTb).


Cisco offers a comprehensive portfolio for passive optical fiber access networks. The Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT solution is based on ITU-T Recommendation G.984.x (GPON) and G.988.x (OMCI). The same network equipment solution allows service providers to evolve toward next-generation PON architectures as defined by the ITU-T Recommendations G.987.x (XG-PON1) and G.989.x (NG-PON2) for both central office and customer premises.


For the central office, the Cisco ME 4600 Series Multiservice Optical Access Platform portfolio is based on a flexible and scalable architecture. Cisco offers the best-of-class solutions in the market designed to evolve easily, from rural and low-density multidwelling unit (MDU) scenarios, using only 8 Gigabit Ethernet and 8 GPON port equipment (Cisco ME 4601 OLT, shown in Figure 1), up to urban and extremely high density, using 768 Gigabit Ethernet and 256 GPON port equipment (Cisco ME 4620 OLT, shown in Figure1). Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT equipment also implements the features required for residential, business, and enterprise services to be provisioned on an end-to-end basis, with appropriate service-level agreements (SLAs), thus allowing required bit rates to be reserved for each dedicated client's needs.

The Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT is a reliable high-availability system that uses common-element 1+1 protection for power, control, switching, and processing, with load balancing link aggregation groups (LAG) and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) at the uplink interfaces. Ethernet ring protection switching (ERPS) mechanisms based on ITU-T G.8032 are available for access-network upper-layer interconnection. For the client side, Type B protection for GPON ports is available according to ITU-T Recommendation G.984.x. From a security perspective, the Cisco ME 4600 Series OLT supports features that help prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks and fake customer Trojan mechanisms, including Access Control Lists (ACLs), MAC duplication prevention, MAC and IP spoofing prevention, broadcast rate control, and user isolation.