Any Way You Slice It
Passive optics serve up wavelength splices
internettelephony.com
ELIZABETH STARR MILLER
The gap between last-mile copper and fiber runs wide for small and
medium-sized businesses caught in the shadow of tall, shiny buildings. Linking
onto a Sonet ring can cost a small fortune, while DSL doesn't offer enough
bandwidth for some customers. But by using inexpensive passive optical
networking splitters and couplers, and an optical access platform that splices
wavelengths, one company found a way to bridge that gap.
Quantum Bridge's optical access platform splices individual wavelengths and
offers bandwidth to customers, giving them just what they need, rather than too
much or not enough. With one pair of fibers, the platform can offer variable
bandwidth rates to 32 customers.
Usually service providers install expensive add/drop multiplexers to link a building
to a Sonet ring. But with the Quantum Bridge platform, the service provider would
install passive optical splitters and couplers to fan out the bandwidth to
customers instead. Service providers then would install Quantum Bridge's
intelligent optical terminal equipment at the customer premises and an optical
access switch at the central office.
Although high-bandwidth options for small and medium-sized businesses used to
be DSL, T-1 or T-3, now the range is 1 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s, said Jeff Gwynne, vice
president of marketing for Quantum Bridge. "This allows us to ship bandwidth
dynamically to satisfy hot spots. Customers can drink as much as they want,
and the equipment can handle it. Service providers can scale up and down
accordingly."
The platform is ideal for clusters of office buildings filled with start-ups, Gwynne
said. As a young company grows, it will require more and more bandwidth.
Eventually, the office will become too small, and the company will have to move.
The process begins again when another start-up with minimal bandwidth
requirements moves in.
Splitting wavelengths results in "an enormous cost savings," said Andrew Cray,
research analyst for The Aberdeen Group. It's a way to reach customers who
otherwise can't afford Sonet but need more speed than DSL provides, he said.
When it comes to network architecture, carriers won't need to change the way
they build their networks, Gwynne said. Instead, what kinds of customers they
can serve will change. "Before carriers could only go to the tall, shiny buildings,"
he said.
The platform will give carriers an opportunity to serve clusters of buildings. And
as carriers deploy services to one user, they will have the chance to go after
other customers in the same building. "They'll be able to gain market share
quickly," Gwynne added.
Although Cray said there is a "definite demand" for Quantum Bridge's platform in
the market of customers stuck between copper and Sonet, it won't work for
everyone.
Internet super carrier PSINet doesn't need the technology for its current customer
base, said Mark Fedor, vice president of engineering for PSINet. If a customer
requires a 15 to 20 Mb/s connection, PSINet "runs a DS-3 and clocks it down,"
Fedor said. For 45 Mb/s links, PSINet also runs out a coaxial DS-3. To deliver
100 Mb/s speeds, PSINet uses 100BaseT and plans to use gigabit Ethernet
connections. "For a high-performance connection, it's not a big deal to run fiber
to the building. And the cost to run coax is not that much of an issue," he said.
The Quantum Bridge platform may have an advantage with its remote provisioning
capabilities, made possible by software developed by the company. The
platform's load balancing capabilities will be interesting to service providers, Cray
said. "It can add bandwidth to one business while taking away from another."
Passive optical networking has been researched for 10 years, Cray said, adding
that BT was the first to try it over fiber to the home. But the technology never
took off.
"Quantum Bridge has developed an integrated solution," he said. "It's
cost-justifiable for most customers as the next step up from copper." |
