More on ODSI, from Fiberopticsonline - Part 1 of 2
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Coalition to Address Next-Generation Optical Networking Interoperability
1/12/00
Fifty networking vendors and service providers have joined the
Optical Domain Service Interconnect (ODSI) initiative. Spearheading the effort
is Sycamore Networks (Chelmsford, MA), which bills the alliance as an open,
industry-wide coalition formed to address interoperability between electrical
and optical network service domains. The membership consists primarily of
start-up equipment manufacturers and network operators, and includes few
old-guard manufacturers and carriers.
The group plans to select, apply, and promote open interfaces and signaling
protocols that will allow higher-layer service networks to effectively interoperate
with an evolving and dynamic optical network core, according to Sycamore.
The effort will include extending recognized industry interfaces and protocols,
conducting interoperable solutions testing, and promoting technical
recommendations to appropriate industry standards organizations, the
company says.
The means by which electrically-based network devices such as Internet
protocol (IP) routers and ATM switches interoperate with a dynamic optical
core will become critical to the evolution of service provider backbone
architectures, Sycamore maintains. For service providers to realize the
benefits and features of today's technology innovations, the optical layer must
effectively interwork with the rest of the network in a way that doesn't
undermine any of its inherent benefits.
"There is a tremendous amount of innovation taking place within the public
network, and ODSI will help accelerate the practical evolution of the
electro-optical boundary in a way that addresses the market requirements and
service needs of today's service providers," says Sycamore chairman and
co-founder Desh Deshpande.
"Optical networking promises to revolutionize the network of the future by
providing inexpensive, unlimited, capacity, but that promise won't be fulfilled if
the new capacity can't be worked into a service model that rewards carriers for
their investment and provides a benefit to businesses and residences," says
Tom Nolle, president and founder of CIMI Corp., an independent analyst firm.
"At the technical level, that means insuring that the optical part of the network
integrates services, management, and protocols with the electrical part. An
initiative to make that happen is absolutely crucial to the future of public carrier
services of all types, everywhere in the world."
"ODSI is an important step toward realizing open signaling and interworking
across multiple network service layers," says Enron Communications' John
Griebling, vice president, Networking Engineering & Operations. "Customers
will benefit from their ability to control and scale network resources to
application requirements."
Sycamore will host the first ODSI meeting on January 18, 2000, in Boston. The
ODSI contact is Scott Larson, 978-250-3433. Several members of ODSI
prepared statements about the effort, which follow:
"With the rapid increase in deployment of broadband access equipment, the
interfaces between electrical access systems and the high-bandwidth optical
core must be implemented in a common fashion to accommodate the demand
for seamless, interoperable, connections. ODSI will be the catalyst to address
this need."—Yogi Mistry, vice president of engineering, Accelerated Networks
Inc.
"ACT Networks is joining the ODSI initiative because we believe it will
potentially accelerate the deployment and the reach of high-speed optical
networks for voice, video and data communications. The timing of this initiative
is excellent for ACT, as we are currently developing our next-generation
access platforms to feed multiservice traffic to such networks."—Andre de
Fusco, president and CEO, ACT Networks Inc.
"ASC is participating in ODSI to help extend the vast benefits of the optical
fiber core to the access network. By creating interoperable broadband
solutions and end-to-end bandwidth provisioning across this critical
intersection, the ODSI is creating an important building block for the next
generation network."—Asghar Mostafa, president and CEO, Advanced
Switching Communications (ASC) Inc.
"As vendors bring out products in the multiple domains of the new optical
infrastructure—core and metro/access—ODSI will cut through industry politics
and provide an open framework that permits a range of services to be enabled
in a multi-vendor environment. ODSI will let us efficiently leverage the inherent
capabilities of Alidian's forthcoming Optical Service Network (OSN) products
by serving as a vehicle for delivering metro access and transmission
capabilities for the required service and mapping those services onto signaled
flows for the optical core. A realistic scenario is that the Alidian OSN or
customer edge device signals for a service, the OSN provides aggregation
and transport across the MAN to the POP core-edge device, which routes the
service onto the optical backbone, thereby providing a seamless end-to-end
flow."—John Jaeger, vice president of marketing, Alidian Networks Inc.
"Encouraging innovative new service creation and delivery is central to
Appian's Intelligent Optical Edge product strategy. ODSI is an important
initiative that will accelerate new service delivery, enabling our service provider
customers to offer end users unprecedented flexibility, control and value from
the public network. Appian is pleased to be an active participant in
ODSI."—Mick Scully, founder and CEO, Appian Communications Inc.
"ODSI will allow carriers to offer new dynamic bandwidth service offerings,
improve their time to revenue through fast provisioning, and refine reliability by
reducing human error in a multi-vendor environment. ODSI is one way to
extend an Astral Point optical mesh network beyond the metropolitan
area."—Raj Shanmugaraj, CEO, Astral Point Communications Inc.
"Today, Atmosphere Networks is delivering the on-ramps to the optical
networks that enable service providers to rapidly create services at the
network's edge, where electrical and optical domains meet. The ODSI
coalition holds a great promise to extend service creation capabilities to
seamlessly spread across the whole optical environment. As a co-founder of
ODSI, Atmosphere will contribute our expertise to give service providers,
subscribers and equipment suppliers a new means to establish, reconfigure
and dynamically create end-to-end services."—Alex Dobrushin, vice president,
marketing, Atmosphere Networks Inc.
"Avici Systems is excited to be a part of ODSI. Next generation networks will
consist of switch routers such as Avici's TSR(R), interoperating with the optical
core to provision bandwidth just in time, without human intervention. The ODSI
coalition will be working to ensure seamless interoperation to deliver these
critical capabilities across multi-vendor implementations."—Pete Chadwick,
vice president of product management, Avici Systems Inc.
"Cabletron strongly feels that the ODSI effort to open the interface into next
generation optical networks is a critical part of enabling large scale adoption.
Additionally, this initiative will play a key role in facilitating interaction with the
optical boundary, extending the full potential of optical networking into the
electrical domain."—John Roese, chief technical officer, Cabletron Systems.
"Campio Communications, which brings application recognition to the IP
services layer, is excited that the ODSI coalition is taking the lead to create
interoperable solutions with higher-layer services and applications. Along with
high caliber companies like Sycamore Networks, Campio will help lead the
way to the deployment of a new carrier infrastructure by bringing intelligence to
services and applications as key enablers for the ISP and ASP
markets."—Shekar Rao, president and CEO, Campio Communications Inc., a
start up company developing next generation, carrier-class IP services
solutions.
"The goal of ODSI, to allow services at the edge of the network to interact in a
standardized manner with the optical domain, is consistent with our objectives
at Chromatis. At Chromatis we are singly-dedicated to providing next
generation equipment for the Metro market in order to help service providers
optimize the economics and bandwidth requirements for converting raw
optical bandwidth into useful services."—Bob Barron, president, COO,
Chromatis Networks.
"Convergent Networks is committed to supporting industry initiatives, such as
ODSI, that promote interoperability between vendors at all layers of the
next-generation network. We agree that open frameworks stimulate innovation
and believe that the use of standard interfaces and protocols can serve only to
accelerate our industry's growth in the future. Ultimately, the beneficiaries of
this innovation are service providers who will build the next-generation network
using 'best of breed' solutions from 'best in class' providers."—Bing Yang,
co-founder and CTO, Convergent Networks Inc.
"Corvia is pleased to participate in the ODSI initiative. The ability for the
evolving optical layer to directly interact with the services layer and provide
bandwidth on demand is an absolute requirement of next generation carrier
networks. An industry-wide collaborative effort on the part of vendors and
carriers to accelerate the interworking functions between the optical and
electrical domains will provide major benefits worldwide."—Gary Law, vice
president of marketing, Corvia Networks Inc.
"Competition and the demand for bandwidth from eCommerce and the Internet
industry means service providers must use their networks to peak efficiency.
Sycamore's ODSI initiative addresses the same issues for optical
inter-networking as we do in performance management. These include
networks that can grow to meet the business; standards-based interoperability
and multi-vendor capability."—Ian McLaren, president and CEO, CrossKeys
Systems Corp.
"The tremendous advances in optical technology can only be leveraged if
carriers can provide new and different services across the electro-optical
boundary. We are thrilled to work with the member companies in jump-starting
development and interoperability activity in this area. The ODSI initiative is
critical and timely, and we applaud Sycamore for taking quick action in
bringing this group together."—Kurt Dobbins, president and founder of
Ellacoya Networks Inc., a start-up company developing next generation carrier
equipment.
"As a provider of IP service provisioning platforms, Ennovate supports the
ODSI initiative because it will become an enabler for rapid deployment of new
IP services - benefiting carriers, their customers and the entire vendor
community. ODSI has a simplicity, elegance and flexibility that is entirely in
tune with the IP way of doing things and it lets us use our core IP competence
to take advantage of the new generation of optical transport systems. Since
ODSI automatically requests the necessary transport, carriers will be able to
use Ennovate's EnSight Service Automation System to instantiate, for
example, a VPN service. The key advantage is that there's no need to know
what's going on behind the interface - we're offering 'one click' provisioning to
the carrier."—Paul Doolan, senior vice president and CTO, Ennovate
Networks Inc.
"The ODSI initiative opens the door to new horizons in service delivery.
Enron's focus in developing the Broadband Operating System software layer
for the Enron Intelligent Network is to enable direct customer access to service
capabilities. ODSI is an important step toward realizing open signaling and
interworking across multiple network service layers. Customers will benefit
from their ability to control and scale network resources to application
requirements."—John Griebling, vice president, networking engineering and
operations, Enron Communications Inc.
"We believe that the ODSI initiative will be crucial to the success of vendors
and carriers alike as we work together to create the infrastructure for next
generation communications. Each company has its own set of core
competencies and this initiative is an excellent way to bring superior packet
and wavelength knowledge and technology together to speed innovation and
rapidly solve problems."—George Dobrowski, CTO, Ficon Technology Inc.
Continued in Part 2, next message |
