Regis, it's probably just me, but I have a hard time capturing the essence of just who these people are. Are we talking about MRV the chip company? Or NBase the hub manufacturer? Or are we discussing the work done by Xyplex. Each of them have a presence on nbase.com, with Xyplex having its own site at xyplex.com
If I were MRV I'd invest a couple of bucks and hire a good identity consultant.
Now, that's not all bad, except that the press release discusses an nbase product, or at least how the GigaFrame hub would be implicated in a major way with the optical advances they've announced (which itself is a mystery to me). I can't find anything on either web site that explains the points that were brought out in the PR.
The PR states that they've achieved a breakthrough. It goes on to say that this 'will' result in something down the road, more or less, but it doesn't say how or what that new something is. I have no grounds for doubting that something is imminent, but unless they state what it is, I will remain reserved on the matter.
They talk about extended distances covered by Ethernet, which is all well and good, but do I want that? I don't think so, at least not under normal conditions. If I had a great distance of raw fiber at my disposal in the WAN, I'd either route over it, or if I had a company of any size which had legacy systems that I still needed to support, as most companies do, I'd probably want to make better use of it in some multi-protocol fashion.
I'd only want to use GE if I had many wavelengths in my arsenal, and I could spare one of them to create a transparent LAN operation platform provided other matters didn't prevent me from doing that, such as security risks, some broadcast concerns, and costs (and administrative headaches) associated with off premises encryption measures.
But maybe this is what their next statement will unveil: the fact that they will make an abundance of wavelengths available. And if that is the case, then I see their advantage. I just wish they'd come out and say it and eliminate the guesswork.
The product release discusses routing, yet I cannot find anything that resembles a Layer 3 RFC anywhere in their web site product descriptions for the GigaFrame. The only thing I find is references to IEEE Layer 2 802.x stuff. Switching at Layer 3 in this case is not the commonly referenced routing, in the sense that routing takes place over the Internet using RFC-compliant protocols and algorithms.
DWDM-associated routing in the optical domain is just around the corner, or so I am told, but MRVC is talking about switching wavelengths, not routing them... what's the difference? I don't know, and they don't elaborate enough in the PR to give me a clue, nor do they cover it at all, to the best of my knowledge, in either of their web sites.
If anyone can tell me what this company is doing in this release, or more to the point, how they propose to achieve what they say they are going to do, I'd be much obliged. In the meantime, to answer your question, it's a continuing enigma to me. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Again, maybe it's just me.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
