It was a small, small world in the optical products sector at SUPERCOMM 2000 as upstart new firms stole the optical show with new products that break the SONET mold and bring multiple data transport protocols to metro optical systems.
These newcomers also are pushing optical systems closer and closer to the customer, in some cases all the way to the customer premises. A new approach to optical networks is emerging: Optics as a general-purpose transport for all types of data and voice traffic, often in the same multiplex, rather than the unchangeable pipes of the SONET approach.
Optical Access
Most of the action at SUPERCOMM 2000, and the weeks leading up to it, was centered around a new class of product, called optical access or metro access. These products aggregate a variety of inputs to an optical network--IP, ATM, Ethernet, time-division multiplex (TDM)--onto SONET rings or DWDM waves. They can extend access to optical networks as far out as an office building, or can groom metro rings into large multi-protocol streams ready for backbone networks.
It is the most creative and innovative sector, and perhaps the most confusing, particularly for carriers. "In metro optical there are so many companies, and a lot of great ideas, but not that many carriers and not that much willingness on the carriers' part to trial all these new systems," says Scott Clavenna, principal analyst at Pioneer Consulting LLC (www.pioneerconsulting.com). "Even if they like the idea of a new system, a lot of the times they don't have the internal wherewithal to trial it. They are already committed to three to four trials and are just getting up to speed on their existing equipment."
Yet these products are important, Clavenna says, because some of them "are redefining how networks operate. They are not just incremental advances where they are a little faster than the last switch or cheaper or have more core density. That is what Lucent [Technologies Inc., www.lucent.com] and Nortel [Networks Corp., www.nortelnetworks.com] give." The advances, Clavenna says, "change the way carriers do business and make it tough for them to figure out how to use these products."
Luminous Networks Inc. (www.lumnet.com) is among the cadre of new access and edge vendors showing product for the first time at SUPERCOMM. The company's PacketWave gigabit Ethernet system for metro networks was announced on May 22. The Luminous system offers support for gigabit Ethernet at 1gbps to 40gbps over rings with the 50-millisecond restore time of SONET, but at a much lower cost. Protection is less costly because Luminous' system uses a control packet sent to the originating node rather than specifying each DSL link. The product, which also supports DWDM, is aimed at CLEC and data center markets.
Luminous has teamed with Scientific-Atlanta Inc. (www.scientificatlanta.com), a leading cable equipment firm, which will OEM its product for cable operators. The Luminous system will be used for communication among cable headends, transmitting analog and digital video, as well as data and voice.
Also showing product for the first time was Cyras Systems Inc. (www.cyras.com), which calls its K2 a "transmetro optical product." That means that it spans from metro core to metro access. It can function in metro ring or mesh networks. The K2 combines several techniques to optimize bandwidth: statistical multiplexing to fill fiber efficiently, preservation of native traffic protocols (incoming and outgoing), concatenation of SONET with traffic-based dynamic provisioning (giving real-time reallocation of bandwidth), and data grooming across the transmetro. The company claims a 10-fold to 40-fold increase in price/performance ratio.
Lantern Communications Inc. (www.lanterncom.com), a startup in transporting gigabit Ethernet over optical networks, is building an access switch for the metro area that enables Ethernet to be transported with QoS and 50-millisecond restoration. Gigabit Ethernet is expected to offer lower costs initially for operation, as well as the ability to offer highly flexible bandwidth.
Lucent made an agreement to acquire one of the leading startups in this space, Chromatis Networks Inc. (www.chromatis.com), just before SUPERCOMM 2000. The Chromatis Metropolis "is a product that looks like a Cerent [acquired by Cisco Systems Inc., www.cisco.com] on the low-speed side, with OC-3, OC-12, frame relay or gigabit Ethernet," says Kathy Szelag, Lucent's vice president of marketing. "But inside it has an ATM switching fabric in addition to TDM switching, so it can multiplex low-speed input and pack it onto a fiber."
The system can start with transmission at 1,310 nanometers and add DWDM at 1,550 nanometers. The Chromatis box now has an integrated optical amplifier for balancing the power for each wave.
At SUPERCOMM, Lucent showed Ignitus, another metro optical product that takes the place of a traditional SONET add/drop multiplexer (ADM). It aggregates onto a ring low-speed traffic, such as DS-1s, DS-3s, OC-3 and OC-12, as well as input from a DSLAM and IP in ATM or IP in frame relay. It replaces an ADM, but has the capabilities of a full-blown ATM edge switch, as well as a 1.2gbps SONET cross-connect. The advantage of the product, Szelag says, is that it does not interfere with existing SONET in a carrier's network.
Alidian Networks Inc. (www.alidian.com), one of the startups that announced earlier in the spring, has added features for the storage-area network (SAN) market. Alidian's original announcement featured the ability to multiplex multiple protocols (ATM, IP, TDM and frame relay) onto a single wavelength for maximum efficiency in bandwidth use. Two new Wave Direct interfaces have been added to the product. One puts data protocols enterprise systems connection (ESCON) and fibre channel/FICON onto their own waves for transport. The other, developed in partnership with Gadzoox Networks Inc. (www.gadzoox.com), is for a card that takes in fibre channel and puts out gigabit Ethernet.
Gadzoox, which has expertise in data formats such as fibre channel, also adds the ability to throttle data formats and put multiple customers on a wave. The combination of Alidian and Gadzoox capabilities "means you can have a wide area network where storage network connections can be a part of a larger service offering, such as IP," says Robert Lefkowits, Gadzoox's vice president of marketing. "Also, carriers can be opportunistic. If a customer needs a special service, they can undercut the price [of traditional carriers] and do unusual protocols, such as fibre channel."
Astral Point Communications Inc. (www.astralpoint.com), which brought mesh topology to the metro space with its initial product, the ON 5000 announced in March, has added an optical network management system, the ONet. The ON 5000 replaces many optical components, including SONET ADMs, standalone digital cross-connects and ATM equipment. The ONet system provides the network management needed to take advantage of its abilities. It has automated provisioning based on multiprotocol label switching (MPLS). The system automatically locates all the nodes in a network, assigns IP addresses and builds a topology. The system allows a carrier to offer different levels of protection and to give customers a view to their own portion of the network. Astral Point announced that Time Warner Telecom Inc. (www.twtelecom.com) is a beta customer for both ONet and the ON 5000.
Centerpoint Broadband Technologies Inc. (www.centerpoint.com) announced an approach to metro optical transport that takes in traffic types, such as OC-3, OC-12 or gigabit Ethernet, and modulates them using a technology called subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) so each traffic type has its own radio frequency (RF) signal. These are then combined in the RF domain onto a wave for transmission within a DWDM system, with much less processing than required for SONET. The system enables high-bandwidth transport with high efficiency in the use of the capacity of each wave, says Dana Waldman, Centerpoint's president and CEO. The products can replace ADMs on a ring or function in point-to-point applications.
Another company unveiling its technology was Metro-Optix (www.metro-optix.com), an Ericsson Inc. (www.ericsson.se) spinoff. The company is developing a metro product that aggregates traffic ranging from DS-1s and DS-3s to HDSL2, gigabit Ethernet, fast Ethernet and OC-3 into OC-192 streams and DWDM. "Our value proposition is that we can migrate to include a full IP router or an ATM edge switch at 10gbps. We can put multiple protocols in the pipes such as ATM and IP," says Kris Shankar, Metro-Optix's CTO. Instead of dedicating ports to a particular kind of traffic, all ports are multiservice, and new kinds of traffic are included by adding cards to the chassis. If an ATM switching fabric is added, ports can be configured to add ATM capability. "Operators don't have to bet which protocol is going to win," Shankar says. The company's beta customers include Genuity Inc. (www.genuity.com, formerly GTE Internetworking) and WorldCom Inc. (www.wcom.com).
Appian Communications Inc. (www.appiancom.com) demonstrated its "active optical last mile" approach, which brings optical technology to large buildings and other access aggregation points. The company was just moving to lab trials at SUPERCOMM and expects to begin field trials in July.
Optical Edge
The metro edge of optical core networks, which links access networks to the core, also has been the scene of innovation, pushed by the changes in metro access. Some companies have straddled both edge and access.
Amber Networks Inc. (www.ambernetworks.com) made its debut at SUPERCOMM and introduced what it calls an aggregation service router--a highly scalable device that directs multiple service feeds (T3, TDM, frame relay, ATM, IP, etc.) onto core IP optical networks as OC-12 links that are packet over SONET. The new product, the ASR 2000, supports a wide array of services, aggregating them into IP streams for an IP core network.
The Amber system has more than 10,000 T1s packed into a seven-foot rack, which beats competitive products from Cisco and Nortel. The product uses MPLS not just for traffic provisioning, but also for protection and service restoration to recover all routing and packet sequencing information if a network link fails.
Intelligent Optical
Corvis Corp. (www.corvis.com), which has been controversial because of its refusal to reveal the technology behind its product, announced that Qwest Communications International Inc. (www.qwest.com) had signed a multiyear agreement to buy its OC-192 intelligent optical networking products. Corvis also has agreements with Broadwing Communications, a subsidiary of Broadwing Inc. (www.broadwing.com), and Williams Communications (www.williamscommunications.com).
Corvis employs a photonic cross-connect technology, but has not revealed how its system works. Shyam Jha, Corvis' vice president of marketing says, "It doesn't matter" how the company's technology works. "Our customers know, and that's all that matters. The game will be won on technology. This is not a do-it-yourself optical networking kit."
The Corvis technology, Jha says, can demultiplex and reroute lambdas without converting to electrical signals. The device is even able to multicast waves without electrical conversion. It has a reach of 3,200 kilometers (km) between regenerators and its own management system.
Ciena Corp. (www.ciena.com) announced the CoreDirector CL, a scaled-down version of its intelligent networking product for mesh topology DWDM networks. The CL supports 64 interfaces rather than the 256 of the full CoreDirector implementation. "It is aimed at smaller central offices using a smaller form factor and lower price," says Herman Fuller, director of product management. The product aggregates OC-3s and OC-12s to OC-48s, and later this year, OC-192, and can switch at synchronous transport signal level 1 (STS-1).
Ciena also showed a new management and provisioning system that can prioritize traffic at five different levels. Ciena now uses its own prioritization scheme but plans to adopt MPLS when that protocol is completed.
Sycamore Networks Inc. (www.sycamorenetworks.com) has added OC-192 capability to its SN8000 DWDM product, an intelligent optical transport product. Sycamore also announced that it has agreed to acquire Sirocco Systems Inc. (www.siroccosystems.com), a vendor of products in the new "optical access" product sector. The addition of Sirocco products to the Sycamore product line will broaden the company's offerings to include access and edge optical networking. One feature of Sirocco's products that made the acquisition attractive, says Dan Smith, Sycamore president and CEO, is that they provide transport in native-mode IP and ATM, as well as including DWDM in some models.
DWDM
There was not as much activity in pure DWDM systems as in past years, with most of the new technology incorporated in optical access products with the ability to upgrade to DWDM. Vendors primarily showed increased channel counts and longer reach for their systems.
Siemens AG (www.siemens.de) has formed a new unit, Optisphere, for its optical products. The company showed a 160-channel version of its Infinity DWDM product, which now stands at 32 channels. Infinity supports speeds of 10gbps to 40gbps per channel. It also has out-of-band forward error correction (FEC) for greater distance. The company also has added Raman amplification and can reach up to 1,000 km with 160 channels.
Siemens also has added an optical ADM for the 160-channel version of Infinity that can switch waves between two fibers or drop waves. The product is similar to the PurePath Wavelength switch from Corning Inc. (www.corning.com) (see Fiber).
Siemens also showed the Optical Channel Protection (OCP), a simple splitter geared to provide a backup signal for 10gbps services. The product, which does not use SONET, "provides a very lean architecture," says Stephan Rettenberger, senior product manager.
Siemens would like to add multiprotocol lambda switching (MPLambdaS) by the end of the year, Rettenberger says, and hopes to demonstrate MPLambdaS with its optical cross-connect at the NFOEC convention in Denver in August.
Alcatel N.V. (www.alcatel.com) demonstrated a long-haul DWDM system, the Optinex 1640, that will have a reach of 3,000 km rather than the traditional 600 km to 2,000 km systems. The products will eventually offer up to 240 wavelengths, and up to 40gbps transmission speeds. Alcatel announced it has the first 40-gigabit DWDM system in service with European long-haul operator KPN.
Hitachi Ltd. (www.hitachi.co.jp), which makes high-value DWDM and SONET equipment, has increased the channel count on its DWDM system from 32 to 64. But the third quarter of 2001 the company expects to offer 50 MHz spacing between channels. The reach of the system also has been increased from 500 km to 1,000 km, which would enable it to operate without regeneration in 80 percent of the networks in the United States. The company also showed its GR2000 gigabit router that aggregates IP traffic to the OC-48 level for Hitachi optical networks.
Marconi has developed a high-capacity point-to-point DWDM transmission system for data applications. It supports a range of speeds from OC-3 to OC-192 on up to 80 channels.
Traditional SONET
SONET, which is seeing multiprotocol products nibble away at its markets, is still a powerful market force, and is still the leading technology in optical networks. A number of companies are showing new flavors or augmentations of SONET that make the technology more responsive to the mixed data/voice traffic dominant in networks today.
Lucent showed a new SONET at OC-192 speed designed for ISPs. The product is designed for a ring, but does not process all of the SONET header information and supports only OC-48 or gigabit Ethernet. The product, which will be adopted by Metromedia Fiber Network Inc. (www.mmfn.com), also has SNMP management to enable management by browser for ISPs.
Tellabs unveiled its Titan 6500, which combines a digital cross-connect and an ADM in what the company calls a "broadband cross-connect." The device merits that name, says Steve Susina, senior business manager in Tellabs' Optical Networking Division, because it has no interfaces below DS-3 and switches at the DS-1 level rather than the more typical DS-0. The product does SONET traffic grooming, but is ready to switch ATM or IP traffic. It uses a proprietary packet internally that allows it to switch ATM, IP or TDM traffic. Customers can begin with basic SONET capability and add IP or ATM as needed. The device starts at 6,144 OC-1s and can scale to 49,000.
There is no gigabit Ethernet interface at this time, though an IP interface is being developed with that in mind, says Susina. "Our view is that these traffic types will commingle. Some networks, such as Yipes [Communications Inc., www.yipes.com], will have only one type [gigabit Ethernet]. Our telco customers have lots of DS-0s and can't overnight switch to a different network."
Marconi Corp. plc (www.marconi.com) showed the MCN-7000 Multiservice Carrier Node, a device that combines the functions of an optical cross-connect, ADM and data switch/router. The MCN-7000 combines SONET access and edge functions, and includes support for DWDM. The boxes can aggregate traffic, such as OC-3/12, DS-3s and DS-1s, for one backbone ring or for switching from one ring to another. "It competes with the Tellabs Titan with less floor space," says Marcel Labbe, a product manager.
Alcatel has expanded its existing SONET line with an "optical gateway" that will aggregate and groom TDM circuits and output OC-48 or OC-192. The company has added OC-192 capability to several products. The new OC-192 capability will be available by the third quarter of 2001.
Fujitsu Business Communication Systems Inc. (www.fbcs.fujitsu.com) added capabilities to both its Flash 600 and Flash 2400 product lines. The Flash 600 added OC-48 optics and a switching fabric that can operate at the DS-1 level. The product has a DS-1 card that can drop as many as 168 DS-1s. "A lot of customers want a box that can take in OC-48s and drop individual DS-1s," says Bob Laurent, manager of product marketing at Fujitsu. "Some vendors are even talking OC-192 to DS-1, but that would be cost-prohibitive and is more of a proof of concept than a product," he says. In the future, Fujitsu plans to add a DWDM option.
A new Flash 2400 will be available in the fourth quarter featuring six OC-48s in one rack. OC-192 capability will ship in the first quarter of 2001 in a product that can drop circuits ranging from DS-3 to OC-192. It will have a switching matrix of 864-by-864 STS-1s. The 20-slot chassis leaves room for a number of upgrade cards in the future. Four slots have been left empty for upgrade cards that the company plans for data transmission protocols, probably beginning with an ATM switching fabric, which the Flash 600 already has. Another future upgrade card is gigabit Ethernet.
Photonics
The relatively abundant number of photonic components on display at SUPERCOMM belie the fact that photonic switching is still in its infancy and that even the few cross-connect products offered for sale are questionable as the basis of a robust telecom network. "There is no large switch available today that you would want to put in a product," says Victor Mizrahi, chief scientist at Ciena, which is actively studying photonic products.
There are several issues that need to be resolved before photonic switching can move into widespread use, he says. First is wave blocking. Each wave coming into a photonic cross-connect needs a free outgoing path of the same color or it is blocked. There is no way to change the frequency (color) of a DWDM wave without converting it to electricity. Also necessary are effective ways to monitor performance and get route information.
"We see photonic [components] as a complement to electrical ones," says Mizrahi. "To route an entire fiber, all-optics wins hands down, but to change a wave and deal with wave blocking, our CoreDirector makes more sense."
Tellabs has made a 25 percent investment in Calient Networks (www.calient.net), a new entrant in the photonic networking sector. Calient uses micromirror technology to provide a photonic cross-connect.
Charles Corbalis, CEO of Calient, says, "Our proposition to the market is that photonic switching in and of itself, just the plain ability to switch light, is an incredible need, not only in the core but also in the metro area. Also, photonic switching will enable service providers to migrate from today's network of digital cross-connects to a photonic network by offloading the high-bandwidth express pipes that are switched through cross-connects. Instead you can run that through a photonic switch, and that frees up the ports on the cross-connects to do what they do well, which is lower-speed interfaces and the grooming of low-speed signals up to high-speed transport speed."
Alcatel will show a photonic cross-connect later this year, the CrossLight system, likely at the NFOEC show in August. The cross-connect, combined with a new high-bandwidth router due in 2001, will be the basis for an intelligent optical solutions, says Kent Novak, Alcatel's vice president of marketing of transmission systems. "It's a lot more than just a cross-connect. It is intelligent control and communication with large routers" for dynamic bandwidth allocation and service restoration using mesh topologies, he says.
Lucent is another looking to combine its photonic cross-connect, the LambdaRouter, with its high-end NX64000 router in a DWDM-based mesh topology to create an intelligent optical network with multiple restoration options. The LambdaRouter will be a 256-by-256 matrix when it is first available in July, says Szelag, with speeds of 2.5gbps and 10gbps on each wave. A 1,024-by-1,024 matrix will be available in the second quarter of 2001.
Siemens also showed the photonic cross-connect it debuted at CeBIT 2000 in February, which also uses micromirror technology. In addition, the company showed an optical multiplexer, called Tex, that multiplexes four 2.5gbps streams into one 10gbps stream without electrical conversion. The product will be available by the fourth quarter of 2000.
Lucent is working with standards bodies to develop out-of-band MPLambdaS signaling as a way for mesh networks to communicate for provisioning and restoration.
Corning, which has enjoyed a banner year of fiber and component sales because of the growth of optical networking, showed a new component: PurePath, a dynamic spectrum equalizer. In the course of transmission over a DWDM network, one or more wavelengths may end up at different power levels than other waves, which makes them prone to interfere with each other. The new Corning product dynamically adjusts the power levels for each color.
The Corning PurePath Wavelength Switch can switch waves between two fibers, up to 80 channels per fiber. Essentially a true optical ADM (OADM), the product uses liquid crystal display (LCD) technology to route waves. Because of wave blocking, the same colors must be switched between fibers.
Marconi is developing a tunable laser, which is not yet announced. It uses electrical tuning technology similar to that used by Altitun AB (www.altitun.com), says Labbe. Besides its use for spares in DWDM systems, the product could be used to change the frequency of a wave as it is switched from one wave to another.
Ciena has a relationship with YAFO Networks Inc. (www.yafonet.com), which has developed a new technology to deal with polarization mode dispersion (PMD), a form of optical signal degradation that occurs in long-haul networks. The techniques developed by YAFO allow existing fiber to carry higher bit rates--speeds that would be difficult to achieve without compensating for the PMD. There have been reports that Ciena might acquire YAFO in the future, though neither would confirm that an acquisition was imminent.
