Article on New Access and MetroFusion, courtesy of the Yahoo! thread. I cut-pasted-formatted it a bit for readability.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK RUNS CIRCLES AROUND DWDM OLDTIMERS
02/01/99 Fiber Optics News
(c) 1999 Phillips Business Information, Inc.
The fathers of dense wave division multiplexing take note: Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it. And one start-up is proving Ralph Waldo Emerson right by recalibrating DWDM networks.
At 10 months and still wearing diapers, New Access Communications is steadying its first steps with a metropolitan DWDM system called MetroFusion.
Equipment of the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based manufacturer solves one of the age-old dilemmas of DWDM: How to allow any node on a DWDM network to communicate with any other node without installing large numbers of lasers and receivers at each node.
New Access designers render that concern obsolete by having given birth to a device called MetroCore, which can be installed on a fiber optic ring. "We are trying to create a network out of a WDM system," says Near Margalit, president and CEO of New Access Communications. "We have taken the Cambrian [NT] ring but added a MetroCore device. It can receive all of the wavelengths and transmit all of the wavelengths on the ring. We have MetroEdge devices at the customer premises, which receive on one wavelength and transmit on it."
Now, here's the kicker. Margalit has no intention of taking baby steps. He plans to price MetroFusion 50 percent below infirmed alternatives. But just as a baby keeps adults in suspense, so too will New Access execs, who have yet to set pricing on the product they announced Jan. 25 at ComNet '99 in Washington.
Meanwhile, Brent Allen, Nortel [NT] product manager for OPTera, says Nortel execs weighed the idea of developing a central node for metro DWDM to translate wavelengths between nodes, but decided it was too risky. Nortel officials reasoned the core device would become a single point of failure.
Margalit, likewise, shares the concern and consequently will sell users a second MetroCore device for network backup. Competitive local exchange carriers likely would benefit most since MetroCore could support a 50 Km loop of accompanying MetroEdge devices - all of which would provide excellent DWDM coverage in an urban market. Since CLECs often offer high-capacity bandwidth to Internet service providers, CLECs may look long and hard at the new kid on the block.
New Access Solutions also is considering a new direction for MetroFusion. The company is working on technology that would allow it to connect MetroCore devices into larger rings. The technology would accommodate a distance of 100 Km between each MetroCore device, which would mean devices could give DWDM coverage to the counties surrounding a city, rather than just an urban area alone. New Access has not set a time frame for when the technology would hit the market. DWDM manufacturers beware: The new kid on the block may begin running ahead of the pack long before it grows up.
Generation Gap
Two DWDM systems are competing in the fiber market today. While the point-to-point system might take 16 OC-48 channels, multiplex them and transmit them over fiber optic cables, the other connects multiple nodes on a fiber ring.
In the first model, channels are de-multi-plexed at the other end, making one fiber strand look like 16. In the second, nodes must use the same wavelength to communicate. Consequently, for a given node to com-municate with others on a ring, the latter must support multiple wavelengths. Each node,therefore, employs multiple lasers and receivers, which increase costs. An eight-node DWDM ring can increase the cost by as much as $2.4 million.
Products At A Glance
New Access officials plan to ship the company's MetroFusion line of products by June. MetroFusion is configured to operate with IP networks. Here's how it works: An IP router is installed on top of the MetroCore device, and the router relays a packet to its destination point. The MetroCore device doesn't need to understand the header of a packet; it merely needs to comprehend what level of bandwidth is being requested for a certain MetroEdge device, and what the wavelength is.
Company officials demonstrated two products at ComNet: MetroCore 800 and MetroEdge 2000. MetroCore 800 allows for the connection of eight MetroEdge 2000 devices on up to 50 Km dual fiber rings,providing 16 Gbps of capacity using eight wavelengths. MetroCore has an eight-wavelength expansion port, so it could provide up to 16 wavelengths per loop. MetroEdge 2000 has cards that support two gigabit ethernet ports, or 20 10/100 Mbps ethernet ports.
(Brent Allen, Nortel, 613/599-6060; Michelle Persell, New Access Communications, 805/569-1226.)
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