FROM IBD......... Anew technology could brighten the future of computer networks.
Fiber optics - which uses light signals - already carries voice and data across telephone lines. But most networks are nonoptical. And their data travel as electronic signals that must be translated into optical signals before being transmitted on any fiber-optic line.
Would it be easier and faster if networks ran on optical signals instead of electrical ones?
Yes, says Leslie Danziger, chairman and founder of Albuquerque, N.M.-based LightPath Technologies Inc. Her company makes Gradium glass, a new high-tech ''windowpane'' used to manipulate light.
Gradium could go right onto networking equipment and chips in fiber-optic networks. It could help make light technology more sophisticated and open up new ways of doing old tasks.
''The public probably doesn't realize how big a role light plays in technology,'' Danziger said. ''A few years ago, when people thought about optics, they thought about eyeglasses and camera lenses. But today, telecommunications is based on key technologies like fiber optics.''
Fiber optics carries information on streams of light. It's used in such things as telecommunications products, fax machines, CD players and laser surgery.
But optical technology in local-area networks is still a ways off, says William Hawe, vice president of architecture at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Bay Networks Inc. Fiber optics probably won't ever completely replace electrical signals on data networks, but it could give LANs a boost, he says.
LightPath makes such products as medical endoscopes, industrial laser lenses and wafer inspection lenses using Gradium.
LightChip, a subsidiary of LightPath, was formed in September to make chips using optical technology for data and telecommunications networks.
Gradium glass is at the heart of moving optics into LANs, Danziger says. A technology called wavelength division multiplexing acts like a traffic cop to direct data through optical networks. Gradium glass will pave the way for advances in WDM, Danziger says.
Gradium glass is created with varying densities. Light can be steered, focused and moved within the glass, says Danziger.
WDM is good at directing traffic over long-distance fiber-optic lines. But it has trouble with the short haul.
That's a problem, because LANs take data on short hauls. But Gradium could solve the problem. It's flexible and could be used on a chip to make connections between short LAN segments, Danziger says.
''That's (the chips) on our drawing boards,'' she said. ''It's several years away. But I believe WDM will be in our local-area networks, allowing us to bring in video and data and . . . handle all of those different streams.''
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Copyright (c) 1997 Investors Business Daily, All rights reserved.
Investor's Business Daily - Computers & Technology (12//1/97)
Gradium Puts Networks In A New Light
By Michele Hostetler |
