The SONAbeam? 8-E compact is a lightweight unit that is optimized for short-distance links from 50 meters (160 ft) up to 4650 meters (2.9 miles). It includes two redundant high-powered lasers transmitting at 1550nm.

Interchangeable interface cards allow you to quickly and inexpensively ramp bandwidth or switch protocols. The SONAbeam? 8-E interface cards support NxT1/E1, or datarate transparent transmission and offer the added reliability of clock data-rate recovery (CDR). Additionally, the SONAbeam? 8-E can be managed over Ethernet and is IP addressable.