Consumer Services: Optics Vendors Go Back to Basics

Among the new products introduced in the SONET aggregation space were Cisco Systems Inc.'s ONS 15600, which combines the functionality of a SONET/SDH mux with a digital cross-connect system. It can sit between regional rings or between regional and core networks to aggregate traffic from Cisco's popular 15454 next-generation SONET product, which the vendor got through its acquisition of Cerent in 1999.

The ONS 15600 delivers 128 OC48s in a single shelf and 1 terabit of capacity in a single rack. General availability is scheduled for this quarter. In late September, Looking Glass Networks Inc. and US Signal both were evaluating the new product, which will sell for about $600,000 for a base configuration.

Also with a new optical cross-connect product at NFOEC was Enavis Networks Ltd., the ECI Telecom spin-off that sells the popular T::DAX cross-connect product. Dubbed an intelligent optical switch, the new Enavis T::CORE is a 320gbps product upgradeable in the future to 5 terabits.

Paul Ellett, Enavis general manager, says the T::CORE offers better efficiency than competing products because every port in the T::CORE system is fully accessible to the matrix. By comparison, competing solutions such as CIENA Corp.'s CoreDirector take up as much capacity for a lower bandwidth card such as OC3 as for a higher bandwidth OC48 card, he says.

Another unique feature of the T::CORE system is its ability to act as an international gateway, adds Ellett. Because it supports both SONET and SDH on a single box, T::CORE can act as a go-between for U.S. and European optical networks, he explains.

The new Enavis product, which delivers 128 OC48s in two bays, is slated to go to field trials this month and is scheduled for general availability in January. A carrier in Asia has signed on to evaluate the product and two long distance carriers in the United States also are kicking the tires on the product, says Ellett.

Yet another newcomer to the optical cross-connect space exhibiting at NFOEC was Polaris Networks Inc. At the show, Polaris Networks took the wraps off its first commercial product -- the OMX optical transport switch. The company is promoting the box as a scalable, multifunction product that consumes significantly less power and space and is far simpler to manage than any DCS currently on the market.

Combining DCS and SONET add/drop functionality for the metro core, the OMX goes up against digital cross-connect solutions from industry leaders Tellabs, with its 5500 box, and Alcatel, with its 1631 product, among others, says Polaris's Sab Gosal, director of product marketing. Both products made their debuts in the early 1990s, says Gosal, and both originally were wideband DS1 and, later, DS3 boxes with fiber-optic interfaces added more recently. Still, despite their evolution, says Gosal, these products have not sufficiently evolved with operator demand. "These are huge hunks of iron that are hard to manage and consume huge [amounts] of power and space," he says.

Gosal says the Polaris system is 20 times less expensive to house and power than competing legacy solutions. The OMX also has lower initial costs and faster time-to-revenue due to automated management, he says.

Gosal says a 1024 STS1 footprint on a Tellabs or Alcatel system would cost about $6 million while the Polaris solution costs around $1 million. "There's a dramatic reduction in the capital expenditure," he says.

For network management, Polaris uses a generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) to allow its network elements to work with existing operational environments and enable carriers to bring up services more quickly and inexpensively. Gosal says Polaris is using GMPLS to allow service providers to understand the topology of their central offices. That will allow carriers to do load shifting between offices, providing new cost efficiencies and scale, he says. That also can eliminate the need for a truck roll to a central office every time a new service is turned up, he says and adds "GMPLS lets you do that from a remote operations center in a matter of seconds." That's opposed to the 40- to 100-day provisioning delay to bring up a T1 on existing infrastructure, he says.

The OMX collapses wideband (DS1 or VT1.5), broadband (DS3 and STS1) and super broadband (STS12 and above) functionality into one fabric. The solution scales from 240 gigabits to 2 terabits of full, nonblocked switched capacity. Gosal says others max out around 170gigabits.

Polaris is targeting the product at new service providers, existing carriers with new deployments, and IXCs and RBOCs that are upgrading Tier 1 markets to alleviate congestion and/or address network management concerns.

The initial version of the OMX, available now, is TDM-based. That product is running in four trials. One trial is with a large IXC, another is with an RBOC, and the other two are with next-generation carriers. The next release of OMX, which has a software-driven switching fabric, will allow for packet-based (ATM, IP and Ethernet) grooming, says Gosal. That release is slated for availability in late 2003.

As for Tellabs, the company announced its new 2.1 release to the Tellabs 6500 transport switch, which adds access and backbone add/drop multiplexing functionality and promises to lower service providers' capex and opex costs by up to 50 percent. The new release also allows for more automated, point-and-click bandwidth provisioning between 6500s. Sprint and Verizon are existing customers of the 6500.

Meanwhile, vendors Meriton Networks Inc. and Metro-Optix each announced new customer activity for their optical products. Optical startup Meriton says it expected to start its first customer trial late in September and that an undisclosed Tier 1 North American carrier would in October begin testing the vendor's Optical Add/Drop Switch (OADX) for ring interconnection. For its part, Metro-Optix added Tennessee carrier's carrier IRIS Networks LLC to its slate of customers; the value of the deal was not disclosed. Metro-Optix sells the CityStream 5000, which is now in its second release. The product combines the functionality of SONET equipment, cross-connects, ATM switching and aggregation, and, in the future will support IP traffic. Iris will be using the box for its VT cross-connection functionality, according to the vendor.

Metro-Optix's cross-connect offers in one-third of a rack in one shelf for about $1,200 per DS3 what a legacy cross-connect needs five or six racks, much more power and about $4,000 per DS3 to deliver, according to the company.

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