Nortel Outlines WDM-PON-Powered Ethernet Access Plan

Nortel Networks Corp. (NT) and LG-Nortel today introduced a new Ethernet Access package, powered by WDM-PON, to help service providers prevent bandwidth bottlenecks in the first mile of their networks.

Unlike bandwidth sharing on a GPON link approaches, WDM-PON makes it possible to divide a single optical fiber into multiple wavelengths, each capable of carrying the same bandwidth that previously required an entire fiber, to individual business and/or residential users.

The Nortel news comes just a day after Adva Optical Networks Inc. detailed a WDM-PON architecture and supporting products designed to enable service providers to converge both access and backhaul networks for business, residential and carrier customers.

Nortel’s Ethernet Access offering was developed by LG-Nortel, a joint venture of LG Electronics and Nortel. The vendor did not provide availability or pricing for the Ethernet Access system that it’s demonstrating at the Broadband World Forum show in Brussels this week.

The timing of the announcement is interesting as Nortel recently said it’s ready to cash in its profitable, well-respected Metro Ethernet Networks unit, comprised of optical and Ethernet gear, in a move that perplexed industry analysts.

By providing dedicated wavelengths to customers, operators avoid problems from sharing bandwidth on a connection such as a slower transmission because of other traffic on the link. Nortel says the sharing approach also raises security issues, with the cumulative end result being speed-challenged Internet links.

The vendor says its new approach, using point-to-point links, supports a minimum speed of 100 mbps.

"Think of the network's bandwidth traffic as millions of cars on an ultra-fast highway," said Peter MacKinnon, president and chairman, LG-Nortel, in prepared comments. "Today, many 'cars' get stuck in traffic jams on access ramps as they travel that first mile to enter the highway or as they travel to their final destination. Nortel's Ethernet Access solution gives each car its own off- and on-ramp by dedicating a single wavelength for each user.”

One industry expert sees the clear difference between PON and WDM-PON.

“PON systems can do this, however, today's PON systems share bandwidth among many users and thus have painful bandwidth constrictions, whereas a WDM-PON can serve up 10 to 20 times the capacity with a dedicated wavelength to each destination, whether to home, building, or DSLAM,” said Michael Howard of Infonetics Research Inc.

“Consumers want a super-fast broadband network and carriers want backhaul facilities to carry residential and business traffic,” Howard continued. “Service providers can solve these problems with a simple, point-to-point Ethernet WDM-PON to meet the ever-growing demands for bandwidth from their customers.”

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