The exponential growth in IP data traffic is placing significant demand on network capacity with backbone requirements quadrupling each year; OC-48 and OC-192 line rates in 1999 and 2000 respectively. At the same time accessibility to dark fiber is increasing with fiber installation continuing to run at record levels in excess of millions of kilometers per year. Service providers require a low-cost solution for lighting fiber over long distance. ONS 15104 enables direct long-haul connectivity at OC-48 line rates between Cisco 12000, 10700, 7600 and 7300 Series Routers, and other Cisco equipment with OC-48 interfaces. This eliminates the cost of deploying a network of SONET/SDH equipment.ONS 15104 is a bidirectional OC-48/STM-16 regenerator that supports single-mode optical fiber transmission when connected to an OC-48 line card (Packet-Over-SONET or Dynamic Packet Transport based) in a Cisco 12000, 10700, 7600, 7300 Series and other routers. It provides OC-48 line extensions in increments of up to 50 miles (80 km) between these routers. This new regenerator is the first IP-addressable optical regenerator with Cisco IOS support. Customers can use the same command-line interface (CLI)-based network management platform for the router as well as for the ONS 15104.