IN A KEYNOTE ADDRESS, Lucent CEO Richard McGinn will
describe his company?s vision of a multiservice optical core. That is the
only technology capable of combining ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)
and IP traffic in a ?total mix-and-match mode,? Szelag said.
A key reason Lucent is heading toward optical technology, McGinn
will say, is its ability to ?future-proof? carrier networks. Eventually,
service providers will be able to offer customers network performance up
to multigigabit speeds by extending optical interfaces to corporate servers
and individual desktops, Szelag said.
Sprint Corp. also plans to showcase the benefits of optical networking
at N+I, said Fred Harris, director of network planning and design at the
Kansas City, Mo., communications company.
?Optical is nearly here.
... Everything other than the
switches will be optical,?
Harris said.
In addition to merging
ATM and IP on a single
network, optical technologies offer more efficient use of network facilities
and higher overall throughput, Harris said. For customers, that means
higher network performance and capacity at comparatively lower cost, he
added.
msnbc.com
|
