George,
I also hope that Ancor can sell as much product as Brocade. The Brocade numbers certainly speak volumes about the Fibre Channel market. (That some skeptics say doesn't exist. <g>)
Years ago, I was involved in a project that linked several points together using Fiber (oops, almost spelled that "Fibre" <g>). We were running 1330 nm on most of the links, and 1550 nm on the longest link. There was talk about using WDM to increase our bandwidth, but nothing ever came of it. The insertion loss was more of a factor for our application, since this was an analog system, but the biggest obstacle was the cost. Not so much the cost of the WDM units themselves, but the extra set of Lasers, Modulators, Demodulators, etc.
I still think there will be big demand for WDM devices. As someone who has worked for a company that laid fiber optic cable, the more bandwidth you can force down a single fiber, the better. (These companies absolutely hate new construction, especially in cities.) It is VERY expensive, and VERY time consuming.
I don't think WDM will be a competitor to Fibre Channel at all. In fact, it may well be complementary.
Craig |
