Lucent readies optical systems to speed data
By Stephen Lawson and Paul Krill
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 4:56 PM PT, Oct 8, 1999
Lucent Technologies will unveil at this week's Telecom '99 trade show, in Geneva, the latest elements of an
optical-network product set that could boost campus bandwidth by as much as 50 times.
The company will introduce the OptiStar OC-48, a 2.5Gbps optical adapter for Microsoft Windows and Linux
servers, as well as the FC1000R 1Gbps storage adapter and accompanying software.
Lucent last week announced plans for technology that will allow enterprises to merge LANs and WANs into a single
high-speed IP network based on optical technology.
The OptiStar product line, including network and storage adapter cards and software, will significantly boost the
bandwidth available across corporate campuses and between enterprise facilities. PC users will be able to download
high-bandwidth files at rates as much as 50 times faster than those of existing corporate networks.
The server adapters can be used to replace current campus wide area network connections -- typically topping out at
45Mbps -- with links of 622Mbps or 2.5Gbps. Today, as Ethernet connections on LANs are boosted to 1Gbps,
WAN links usually provide much lower bandwidth.
Remote access to servers for applications, data retrieval, and backups are held up by this bottleneck, Lucent officials
said.
Optical-network technology, which transmits information via waves of light rather than via electrons, is being deployed
in the new generation of service-provider WANs. Lucent has adapted the technology to serve enterprises in which
massive amounts of data need to be transferred among servers located in separate buildings or nearby sites.
OptiStar products include the following:
-- The OC-12 (622Mbps) network adapter card -- currently available -- and the OC-48 (2.5Gbps) network adapter
card -- shipping later this year -- which plug in to servers to connect them to a backbone network using high-speed
fiber optics;
-- The GE1000 -- shipping in the spring of 2000 -- which is a network adapter card that handles I/O functions
normally handled by a server CPU;
-- The FC1000R -- shipping in late 1999 -- which is an adapter card for accessing information from internal and
external hard drives at a rate of 1Gbps;
-- EdgeSwitch -- shipping in the spring of 2000 -- which is an IP-based switch that connects multiple servers to a
backbone network or to one another;
-- Replicator -- shipping later this year -- which is software that enables real-time information backup from one server
to another in a WAN to provide instant data recovery in the event of a server failure;
-- MediaServe -- shipping later this year -- which is software for accessing high-bandwidth video and audio streams.
Pricing details for the products are not yet available. |
