Saturday news release - these guys are looking like amauteurs
Did the morons running this company forget how to issue a press release- i found this one on bigcharts --
PR NEWS WIRE COSTS 90 bucks -- what the hell is the matter with these guys- this news was found on bigcharts, ya that is where most investors look for news.
Finisar shifts gears, tips system-level WDM switch
SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2000 1:23 AM
- CMP Media
Jan. 21, 2000 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- WASHINGTON - Former LAN and
storage-area technologies like Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel will be courting metropolitan wave-division
multiplexing and carrier-based services at this week's ComNet show here. The first signs of an unexpected
shotgun marriage will arrive via fiber component specialist Finisar Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) moving into
system-level optical switches, and optical metro startup Optical Networks Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) gaining a
minority investment from Fibre Channel OEM Brocade Communications Inc.
The new efforts at Finisar and Optical Networks (ONI) show that multiplexed metropolitan fiber is no longer a
Sonet-only game. The two companies are betting that many service providers will want to carry packet
services without the time-division overhead of Sonet.
Further, the notion of enterprises turning Gigabit Ethernet MANs and large distributed-storage networks over
to service providers for outsourced managed service is a new idea in and of itself. Mike Farley, director of
marketing at Finisar's new networking group, said it is a concept that competitive local carriers, cable TV
multisystem operators and other service provider types jump on right away.
"Anyone with access to dark fiber would like to take over more services for enterprise customers," Farley
said. "We see our services as existing on a totally separate basis from metropolitan Sonet rings."
Finisar conducted an initial public offering last fall that took stock prices into the stratosphere, solely on the
basis of the company's fiber transceiver modules and fiber test equipment.
The company had made some initial system-level forays by offering a fiber link extender for near-metro
distances, Farley said, and that spurred customers to ask whether Finisar could develop a packet switch for
metropolitan fiber rings.
ComNet demo The result is the Opticity Service Provisioning Platform, which will be demonstrated this week
at ComNet. The switch integrates a 32-channel WDM channelizing subsystem along with a special
firmware/hardware feature set Finisar calls OptiLane, allowing multiple protocols to bidirectionally share a
single WDM channel. Similar shared-WDM technologies have been offered for aggregating lower-speed
services. But "we'll be different by making gigabit our baseline and moving up," Farley said. "We have no
interest in looking at services like DS-0 [64-kbit/second] aggregation."
Finisar will be implementing some special buffers in the switch that make it possible to maintain high
throughput at network distances out to 200 km. The fault-tolerance of traditional enterprise Fibre Channel
can be offered at metropolitan radii, without the full ring resiliency used in Sonet networks.
Optical Networks, meanwhile, is closing $50 million in new funding that brings in several corporate minority
investors in addition to venture capitalists.
Cisco Systems Inc. was an initial investor in ONI, as was Bowman Capital Management.
The new round, however, brings in a wider range of OEM and component partners such as Brocade,
giga-router manufacturer Juniper Networks Inc. and component developer E-Tek Dynamics Inc. (soon to be
acquired by JDI Uniphase.)
Hugh Martin, the president of ONI, said that the deal with Brocade was more than an investment and will
expand to more formal joint-development work. Brocade's Fibre Channel switches meld well with the
optical-layer service switching promoted by ONI, Martin said.
By: Loring Wirbel
Copyright 2000 CMP Media Inc. |
