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Technology Stocks : Nortel Networks (NT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (3811)	11/14/1999 1:45:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14638

Hi Ken, thanks for that note. I get just a little bit leery anytime I read articles on photonic layer "routing," because the intended message of this form of marketecture is often to impress the reader by connoting in some veiled way that these devices are actually orders of magnitude ahead of their electronic packet routing cousins. In most cases, however, and IMO, they are only such in the context of Layer 2 MPLS-like flows, but not at the Layer 3 packet routing level. What NEC refers to as the "Photonic adaptation layer," and the context in which it is stated, calls to my mind the region of convergence that Monterey (who was recently acquired by CSCO) exploited in their handling of flows in their Wavelength Routing Protocol, or WaRP. I suspect that the LU NX 64000 also uses this technique to a great measure, as will the Optera device when it is launched. Powerful stuff, no doubt, but it should not be confused with IETF RFC-based Layer 3 IP suites. What they are doing, instead, is switching light paths at Layer 2 under the direction of Layer 3 IP addressing (the latter IP addresses being used as pointers to lambda paths, or to whole fiber optical paths), and redirecting entire classes of differentiated flows between node pairs. They are using "optical bar code labels," in effect, or other optically based identifiers embedded in the lambdas in the process, to carry these user flows which sit on top of the optical flows. Much like Cisco's original concept of "tag switching" or its IETF relative, MPLS. Perhaps now, with recent advances in chip utilization speeds and router architecture design, they can actually perform true packet routing at the OC-48 level, or even at the OC-192 (which in my eyes is still stretching it, just a bit, despite the Nexabit claims). But claims at this time of speeds above those levels should be viewed with caution and an awareness of what they may actually be referring to. If I am mistaken about this, I would surely appreciate any comments or corrections, as appropriate. Regards, Frank Coluccio