Optical Rules....
Next-Generation Networking Sees the Light
7:00 a.m. ET (1300 GMT) February 24, 2000 By Stephanie Izarek
NEW YORK ? Cable modems and DSL may steal today's broadband-access headlines, but all-optical networks may reign in the future ? thanks to the proliferation of more sophisticated applications and consumer demand for even more bandwidth.
According to Forrester Research, bandwidth demand will grow to 100 to 200 times today's rate over the next four to five years.
To meet that demand, the network of the future may require IP (Internet Protocol) applications to ride over wavelengths of light in an all-optical architecture. In an optical network, large amounts of data can ride waves of laser light through glass fibers the size of a human hair.
"An all-optical network is one in which all network functions ? access, data transport, multiplexing, and switching ? are accomplished optically (with photons) rather than electrically (with electrons)," said Chris LeBlanc, data networking analyst for Banc of America Securities, at this year's 17th Annual Technology Conference.
"Over the next several years, communications vendors will rebuild a global network that took 100 years to establish," said LeBlanc. Some of the key players in the renovation include Nortel, Lucent Technologies, Cisco Systems, Qwest, Corvis and Ciena.
The technical appeal of an all-optical network includes scalability of fiber optics, lower cost per bandwidth, improved reliability and rapid recovery from network disruptions. For consumers, the appeal is access to their own 10 gigabit per second light wave.
Optical networking will bring new services to home users, including toll-quality voice, streaming video, streaming audio, and high-speed data transmissions. It will also encourage two-way video conferencing, Internet sharing, broadcast-quality video, distance learning, ecommerce, telecommuting, and telemedicine.
The efforts to bring all-optical networking to consumers are already well underway. On land, construction crews around the nation are busy ripping up city streets to install the new fiber optic phone lines, while at sea, there is a global expansion of submarine cable networks.
Fiber-optic cables are being laid across ocean floors at a rapid pace around the globe. After carefully mapping routes that map rough terrain and fishing grounds, the ships drop the cable into the sea and drag special equipment along the ocean floor to bury cables a few feet under the sediment.
Tyco Submarine Systems, which operates 11 cable ships, for example, estimates that it has already laid 200,000 miles of undersea fiber optic cable.
While optical bandwidth may turn out to be cheaper in the long run, laying the cables is costly. Tyco received $1 billion to add two new cables between Japan and the U.S. West Coast. Another network, Project Oxygen, is trying to raise $10 billion for a 100,000-mile network that will connect 75 countries.
The need for optical switching connection points in all-optical networks is expected to create yet another market opportunity worth billions. According to Pioneer Consulting, over $31 billion will be spent in the coming five years in North America and Europe on optical switching systems.
According to Gerry Butters, president of optical networking at Lucent Technologies, all the expenses are worthwhile. The extended distances of fiber optic cable could avert a major traffic jam on the information highway. So developers will continue to push fiber-optic network capacity limits through increased research.
Lucent's Bell Labs, for example, has shown that it's possible to place more than 1,000 discreet light waves on a single fiber, each carrying as much as 10 Gbps of data.
Lucent's scientists have also figured out how to send individual streams of information through a single fiber by using a different color for each channel. They were able to push 1.6 trillion bits, or terabits, of information through a single fiber by splitting the light beam into 40 different colors-that's enough to carry 200,000 simultaneous video signals.
Metromedia Fiber Network, a provider of end-to-end optical networks, has awarded Nortel Networks an estimated $250 million contract over three years to build its optical network backbone.
Metromedia Fiber Network will deploy Nortel's OPTera Long-Haul technology, which utilizes dense-wavelength division multiplexing (D-WDM), to create a network that will connect 51 major cities across the country. (D-WDM maximizes the ability to carry data by splitting light into multiple channels.)
The new network is expected to be one of the fastest and highest capacity networks in the world. The company is also planning a fiber optic network that will connect 16 cities throughout Europe.
But all-optical does not equal trouble-free. Some analysts think that it can amplify the amount of traffic, particularly as the number of users grows by 25 percent per year. Another problem is that once you have a larger pipe, people will find a way to fill it.
The same applications that become possible because of high-bandwidth networking, such as video conferencing and collaborative research, could also be its downfall. These types of applications will increase the amount of time users stay online and the amount of data they exchange.
Such predictions have engineers scrambling to light up (activate) dark strands of fiber-optic cable to accommodate surges in data traffic. However, even if the players in this market were able to activate all their fiber in the next five years, capacity would only increase to about 70 times what is currently available.
Lucent said that it will invest $1 billion in research and development over the next three years to ensure new innovations in optoelectronics.
Despite the tremendous technological strides in this area, Forrester Research predicts that most people won't see fiber lines coming to their neighborhoods until 2001.
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