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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gamesmistress who wrote (23076)	4/1/2000 11:06:00 AM
From: JLS	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

Great reading, especially about optical switches and the premiums these companies can have. Explanation of the four types of optical switches in development: Optical Switching Fabric -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Description These subsystems connect one wavelength to another. They will be used by vendors to build optical switches with optical rather than electrical cores (see Optical Switches). A wide variety of technologies are being developed for this purpose. The main ones include: - MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems). Arrays of tiny mirrors originally developed for the very large video screens seen at sports events and pop concerts - Liquid crystals. Borrowed from lap-top screen technology, electric currents alter the properties of liquid crystals so that light passing through them is polarized in different ways. Passive optical devices then steer each wavelength of light one way or the other, depending on its polarization. - Tiny bubbles. These act like mirrors, glancing light onto intersecting paths as they traverse microscopic troughs carved in silica. The bubbles are generated using ink-jet printer technology. - Thermo-optical switches. Light is passed though glass that is heated up or cooled down with electrical coils. The heat alters the refractive index of the glass, bending the light so that it enters one fiber or another. - Tunable lasers. These devices pump out light at different wavelengths, and can switch from one wavelength to the other very quickly. Key issues . Early days Each technology has its pros and cons, and right now, it's unclear which will one will end up being the winner. Switch vendors reckon they'll know by the end of the year, and it'll take another six to nine months to incorporate the chosen technology in their products. Scalability Carriers are looking for modular switches that can scale to thousands of ports. Some technologies are intrinsically better at doing this than others. Switching speed The speed with which one wavelength can be connected to another is key. One millisecond is good enough for automatic protection - rerouting traffic around failures. Switching speeds measured in nanoseconds will be needed for routing traffic packet by packet. Players MEMS: - Astart‚ Fiber Networks, Inc.http://www.starswitch.com - Chronos Integrated Microsystems, Inc.http://www.memsrus.com . - Optical Micro-Machines Inc. (OMM) omminc.com Liquid crystals: - Chorum Technologies Inc chorum.com - Corning Inc. corning.com - Spectraswitch, Inc. spectraswitch.com - Bubbles: - Agilent Technologies Inc. agilent.com Thermo-optical switches - JDS Uniphase Inc jdsu.com - Many others Tunable lasers - Agility Communications agilitycom.com - Altitun AB altitun.com - Coretek, Inc coretekinc.com (being acquired by Nortel Networks nortelnetworks.com Related stories in Light Reading: Agilent Unveils Optical Switching Breakthrough Intune Technologies Ltd. Nortel Gambles $1.43 Billion On Tunable Lasers Startup To Upstage Xros on All-Optical Switches Startup To Upstage Xros on All-Optical Switches -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Optical Micro-Machines Inc. (OMM) omminc.com is planning to launch a monster all-optical switch in the next couple of weeks. The switch will have "thousands" of ports, according to Conrad Burke, OMM's senior vice president of marketing and sales. It will be based on MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) and will be "significantly larger" than the previous record-breaker - the 1,152 port optical cross connect unveiled by Xros Inc. xros.com at the Optical Fiber Communications conference a few weeks ago (see Xros Launches First 1000-Port All Optical Cross Connect ). Within a week of Xros's announcement, Nortel Networks had agreed to buy the Californian startup for a staggering $3.25 billion - equivalent to $36 million per member of staff (see Nortel Buys A Monster Cross-Connect ). And that, of course, begs the question whether OMM could go the same way. There are some striking similarities between OMM and Xros. Xros started out developing MEMS subsystems, just like OMM. Then Xros decided to develop a complete switch - which turns out to be exactly what OMM's been doing. Burke says OMM has been developing a complete switch "on a parallel track" to its subsystem business. The switch will be offered to "selected strategic customers only" Burke adds. OMM's new switch is based on two specific developments. First, a new line in MEMS, arrays of tiny tilting mirrors. Its first generation MEMS used mirrors that simply flapped up and down to deflect beams of light. Its next generation will tilt the mirrors in any direction, enabling them to deflect light to a large number of output ports. Second, OMM has also developed a "unique architecture" for using these second generation MEMS to create a very large scale switch. "It's giving us the capability to go much bigger than Xros," says Burke. While OMM prepares to launch its new developments, its first generation MEMS are starting to be used in live networks. Their simplicity limited the size of switches that could be built with them, but enabled the company to get to market faster than the competition, according to Burke. Just yesterday (March 26), OMM announced that GST Telecommunications Inc. gst.net has been running live traffic over a first generation OMM subsystem for more than a month in an un-manned central office - a world first, according to the company. The fact that OMM's gear was configured from a remote console also demonstrated "major operational cost saving capabilities," according to GST's Robert Hendrickson, director of the advanced technologies labs. It's worth noting that two other vendors claim that they have MEMS-based switches in trials with carriers. Lucent Technologies lucent.com says its LambdaRouter is in use by MCI Worldcom Inc. wcom.com. The Starswitch from Astart‚ Fiber Networks, Inc.http://www.starswitch.com, is also said to be in carrier trials.<./p> -- by Peter Heywood, International Editor, Light Reading lightreading.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------