Mike,
I just replaced a bunch of FiberStore WDM passive muxes with OSI Hardware equipment. The FiberStore gear was a huge disappointment (excessive loss, poor technical support, refusal to issue refund without threatening legal action, etc.). I have had good results from the OSI equipment so far. I run passive muxes for CWDM (8 - 16 channels).
would be good for mike to define 'long distances' here, is it:
2km
30km
300km
3000km
Probably the 30-60k range is what you mean by 'long distances' but...
clarity might help.
One particular route I'm looking at is 185 miles, so of the options presented 300 km is closest. 
Hi kenneth... which the distance do you have from side A to side B when you using passive solutions from fiberstore( mux and demux)?
I buy this mux and demux(4 channels single fiber) and only make a test about 60km( mux side A and demux on side B) with sfp+10gb for 80km... ( only see ddm on my ex3300( about -19db for 60km). Test switch access with ssh and pinging tests...
What kind os issue do you have? For distances less than 60km is this solution good?
Thanks!!!
Enviado via iPhone
Grupo Connectoway
Is this for 10G? I'm kind of assuming 10G. What kind of equipment is
being plugged into these? 300km is way beyond what you'll get with a
passive solution, it's definitely in the "long-haul" terrtory. If you are
launching out of a router the best pluggable optic you can generally get
is rated at 80km, 10GBase-ZR, but even a passive mux at each end shaves
some of that distance off.
300km is going to require amplifiers at intervals across the span. Who is
providing the fiber? I'd start talking to traditional transport vendors.
Ekinops as mentioned is probably decent at a lower price, Adva works well
and isn't all that expensive, even Cisco has gear reasonably priced. If
you want to cover 300km on a fiber span though "cheap" isn't really a word
I would describe. It's why people lease circuits. 
Phil
Agree - US$500 (or thereabout) to cover 300km at a reasonable speed with
some reliability and manageability is a stretch (no pun intended).
Mark.
Multiple 10G, yes. I'll reach out to the vendors mentioned to see how they line up, but it looks like I need to look into amps for the passive gear. There's 8 huts between the two ends, so no shortage of opportunities to amplify the signal. I'll know more about that when I get the amount of loss along the route.
Most people I know leasing circuits are doing so because dark isn't available or is otherwise ass expensive due to above shortage. The last quote I got for dark out of a useful facility was like $2M. 100+ miles was like $200k, the last 10 miles or whatever was the balance. Even $100k for gear (two sides and some amps) pales in comparison to $2k+ a month for the next 20 years for a single channel.
Oh, I had no fantasies that the $500 Chinese muxes would do the distance. Actually quite the opposite in that I knew they couldn't, so looking for alternative solutions that didn't break the bank.
Sure, everyone has different needs and there are certainly lots of use
cases for having your own fiber.
You can look into passive muxes and amps, if you have enough places to
amplify along the way shouldn't be a big deal. Companies like PacketLight
(also mentioned) make 1RU amplifiers.
Phil
Mike,
Lighting up dark fiber is very similar to doing fixed wireless links (which you are familiar with).
There are different components involved in making a solutions work.... for each of the problems you have stated there is solution, and yes you have to calculate the loss and match power / optics to make it work.
FYI.. all CWDM/DWDM Muxes are passive ...
Active components (can be external or integrated).
If you want to do a direct run, from DC to DC using the Dark Fiber, you will need to have signal regeneration (or you may be able to get away with amps).
It is commonly expected for the transport provider to hand off the live circuit using standard SFP/SFP+, which means that they have to use a 'media converter' of some sorts to covert from Colorized Light to Standard 1330 or 880nm hand off.
If you want more info, hit me off list.
Regards.
Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom
You can do ~500km without inline amplifier sites using EDFA+Raman+ROPA, but
you are going to need some serious optical engineering to make that work.
The more standard way to do it is amplifier sites every 80-100km for EDFA.
If you are doing 10GigE you will need to allow for DCM also.
Yes can do long distances without need to amplifier site (train tracks for example) but you need to make sure ground is stable and if using track bed of train track that the ballast is good and stable else ground tremors affect the signal quality.
Colin
Hi Mike,
You should try CYAN inc and the Z series. (US based) Very solid platform and very strong warranty.
David Boisseleau