Joining the select group of vendors that have released integrated packet-optical transport switches in the last year, Nokia Siemens Networks unveiled its new packet-optical transport solution, or P-OTS. Designed to give carriers flexibility in handling exploding levels of traffic over transport networks, the hiT 7300 Dense Wave Division Multiplexing system will manage both packet and circuit-switched traffic with high levels of efficiency, the vendor said. Built around multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) technology and the Optical Transport Network (OTN) switch announced by NSN in March, the system combines “the scalability of photonic switching with the flexibility of electrical switching,” the company said in a statement, offering capacity from 1.5 Tbps up to 24Tbps.
"With Internet traffic growing fast and average revenues per subscriber declining, cost per bit is the most pressing issue for service providers," pointed out Uwe Fischer, head of optical networks product management at NSN, in a statement.
A joint venture between Nokia Corp. and Siemens, NSN has fought to hit the black since it was established in 2007. But for the first quarter of 2010, NSN managed to make money for the first time. The JV showed an operating profit of $20.2 million, compared to a $150 million loss a year ago.
Packet-optical systems are considered an important step forward in enabling carriers to deal with the so-called “exaflood” challenge – the huge increase in bandwidth demanded by users downloading movies, music, and video, not to mention trading voice calls, e-mails, and text messages. Today, long-haul carrier networks use expensive core routers to transport IP packet traffic. Adding more routers to handle the surge in bandwidth demand is a costly and power-hungry approach. With OTN, an ITU standard for encapsulating, switching and transporting multiple data types over an optical signal, they can offload much of that traffic to less expensive optical switches.
