Light Shining Brightly At SUPERCOMM
By Evan Blackwell
from the June 4, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Even with the telecom industry mired in a slump, the future prospects of optical networking continue to be a hot commodity.
That's especially true at this week's SUPERCOMM 2001 in Atlanta, where optical equipment vendors and service providers are jostling for mindshare and customers as they address the issues shaping the future of fiber-optic communications.
One group positioned in the heart of all the optical efforts is the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), which is working to develop optical standards uniting the voice and packet worlds. This week, the OIF will use SUPERCOMM to show off its latest protocol with a brand new User Network Interface (UNI) demo at the Georgia Dome. The booth (150-D) will feature 25 optical companies, who all successfully completed the OIF's interoperability lab testing at the University of New Hampshire in May.
"The OIF UNI will allow data equipment to signal optical switches," says Adam Dunstan, the OIF's president. "We're now at a point where we can do interoperability, and we're showing that at SUPERCOMM."
The UNI demo enables client devices to set up and tear down optical circuit connections across the transport network.
The possibility of all-optical switching throughout a network will be one of the hotter topics. NEC America's Public Networks Group has ambitions to operate an all-optical global network. This week at SUPERCOMM, NEC plans on announcing new enhancements to the core of its optical network solution with the CX5210 Converged Open Network Architecture. The CX5210 will be the switch aspect of the service node and will be designed to integrate all forms of media into an IP backbone network, and advance the ability to offer quality of service on the network.
Along with the enhancements, NEC is expected to reveal details of a new partnership with all-optical switch company Tellium Inc., which is the subject of its own buzz following a successful May 16 IPO. Going all-optical is critical to NEC, which needs to span oceans for its global network.
"One of the biggest problems with providing global services is that you have to take the network out of the ocean to go electrical then back," said Dave Broecker, vice president of marketing for NEC America's PNG. "NEC has spent a lot of time on these issues. We want to be all-optical."
NEC's not alone in that sentiment. Earlier in May, Lucent Technologies announced that Global Crossing became the first service provider to purchase the WaveStar LambdaRouter, Lucent's all-optical switch. The LambdaRouter is equipped with two sets of 256 microscopic mirrors, with each set on a one-square-inch silicon base. With the use of software, the mirrors are tilted to reflect or direct wavelengths from an incoming fiber to an outgoing fiber route. According to Lucent, that eliminates the slow and power-consuming conversion to electrical signals in current long-haul networks.
Along with all-optical switching, attendees also will be paying attention to tunable laser developments at SUPERCOMM. The idea of tunable lasers that can be adjusted to emit several different wavelengths has been one of the hottest trends in the optical industry in 2001.
Recent ADC acquisition Altitun, Nortel's Coretek, Agility Communications and Corning-backed Iolon are expecting a lot of attention this week due to their recent progress in the space.
Avantas Networks, an optical network performance testing company backed by JDS Uniphase, will be among the slew of test solution companies exhibiting at SUPERCOMM. Talking about products focused on making optical networks more efficient and cost-effective are such performance management companies as Avantas, Agilent, Acterna and Exfo Electro-Optical Engineering, among others.
Avantas, whose products focus on testing and QoS of SONET/SDH, DWDM and data networks, just introduced its Packet Blazer handheld test device at last month's Networld+Interop show. During SUPERCOMM, Avantas is showcasing new enhancements to a platform that already includes its Network Guardian line of products, which serve as universal network probes (UNP). The new Network Guardian G2 product is a more compact UNP that is deployable at colocation handoff sites, remote POPs, or other sensitive CPE locations.
"Going forward with these networks, what will become more and more important will be performance evaluation," says Giovanni Forte, Avantas vice president of product management. "It won't just be how to get from point A to point B, but how getting from point A to point B affects performance."
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