Courtesy cienisbelieven over on Yahoo..
Optical Cross-Connects Ready to Surge?
By Evan Blackwell
from the March 5, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
Carriers already are heading down the path of optical networks. As a result, the market for cutting edge, optical cross-connect switches looks to be on the verge of a breakthrough.
As advancement from the days of digital cross-connect systems managing the traffic on carrier networks, optical cross-connect (OXC) equipment comes loaded with some optimistic promises. Among them are more efficient bandwidth management and a more automated process for future service deployment.
The OXC gauntlet was thrown down when the first official shipments began in 2000. According to a new study by the IDC, Optical Cross Connects: Market Analysis and Forecast, the space generated around $76 million in revenue last year. By 2005, IDC projects the market at around $5.7 billion.
Sterling Perrin, an analyst for IDC's optical networks program, says the progress of OXCs goes hand-in-hand with dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM), the network technology that has allowed bandwidth to explode on fiber optic networks and pave the way for the coming optical age.
"DWDM has been a huge development for carriers over the past four years," Perrin says. "It solved a lot of problems, but it also created a lot of problems as well."
Namely, how does the glut of traffic brought by the excess capacity get aggregated and shipped in the network? That's where the cross-connect comes into play as the network element to handle that process, grooming traffic and sending it on to various POPs where it is needed. To date, OXC products to be shipped use optical technology at either end for transmission with an internal layer of electronics that includes network management software.
So far, only a handful of equipment vendors officially have announced OXC products and only a handful of carriers would be considered on the leading edge with optical network deployments.
The IDC study singled out four principle players as on the leading edge of OXC manufacturing--Ciena, Sycamore Networks, Tellium and Corvis. All of them made significant OXC product announcements in 2000. Tellium, in particular, made waves last year by signing huge contracts with Qwest Communications and Cable & Wireless, as well as filing for a high-profile IPO.
Others, such as Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, continue developing products.
"The biggest application of these devices is the dynamic provisioning of optical bandwidth," says Krishna Bala, Tellium's CTO. "It lets our customers provide capacity where they need it and when they need it. That's why we see this as such a strong market opportunity."
Early adopters in the carrier space so far have been those that are building out optical networks from scratch, including Qwest Communications International, 360networks, BroadWing, Cable & Wireless and Williams Communications.
As the next wave of OXC development continues, there's also been a growing debate between those who believe the future lies with all-optical cross-connects, and those that still say the use of electronics is needed.
Most optical companies continue to insist that the technology still is not stable enough, and the intelligence provided by the layer of electronics in the cross-connect is not yet available in an all-optical switch. At the same time, the performance of the optical-to-electrical-to-optical (OEO) cross-connects serves the current market just fine.
Corvis already has staked its claim to first-mover status in all-optical, calling itself "the only company" delivering all-optical network solutions through its partnerships with BroadWing and Williams. The Corvis cross-connect, similar to early products from Lucent and Nortel Networks, eliminates the OEO conversions. Corvis and Williams announced last month that they successfully completed a 6,400-kilometer optical transmission without electrical regeneration.
"Optics are great for high-speed data transfer, but optics are also really, really dumb," says Bala. "We have a whole army of engineers trying to solve the optical issues. The technology will get there, but it's not there yet."
Mass market acceptance of the all-optical cross-connect is probably two years away. In the meantime, Perrin says, IDC and other analysts will be monitoring OEO cross-connects and will keep a close eye on one of the newest bull markets in U.S. broadband.
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