Frank and/or anyone else,
Could somebody comment on this post I found on Yahoo which originally was posted (I believe) at the Gilder site recently...
>>This was written by a staff writer for the Gilder Technology Report. It was written 9/30/00
The port count is fibers in and out, but that does not keep you from demuxing before switching. You would need enough fibers to carry the demuxed signal, though.
No fiber glut, but lots of lambdas. Optical crossconnects are actually the first big step the network takes on the way to no switches. Much less switching going when we switch lambda circuits than when we switch bits or megabits. As we get wider and weaker (remember Shannon) more and more circuits will remain open permanently. If we are at point A and want to go to either B or C, we don't have to switch. We have so many circuits we always have one open from A to B and from A to C simultaneously. We use tunable lasers to put the photon on the right circuit. That is, we change the state of the photon rather than change the state of the network (i.e., rather than move the photon spatially in a switch). Smart photon, dumb optics. That is what Simon Cao meant at Telecosm. His was the most revolutionary speech.
The switchless network is coming, and Xros, Calient, Tellium, Ciena, etc. can't stop it. Their switches are interim solutions on the way to paradigmatic simplicity.
Yes, you are right, open circuits are more bandwidth wasting than optical crossconnects which in turn are more bandwidth wasting than electonic switches.<<
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I was under the impression that this shift (and consequent non-acceptance of the "interim solutions") is not as imminent as portrayed here....am I way off in thinking that? Thanks. |
