The hot-swappable input/output (I/O) cards provide excellent in-service expansion capabilities in convenient sets of 16 ports per I/O card for the MX48, thus allowing re-configuration without interrupting signal processing.

Each I/O card consists of one transmit (T) and one receive (R) optic per port. I/O cards are available with LC-type fiber connectors and can be assembled with single-mode or multi-mode optics (SFP+). Each individual I/O card lists the ports as 1 through 16 (right to left) on the MX48.