You may have heard the term "Killer App" used previously. DWDM, pioneered by Ciena, is a killer app - a disruptive technology. If you have previously invested in companies offering killer aps, you no doubt have received outstanding returns on your investment over time.
Currently, in Optical Networking, there are two emerging Killer Apps, Juniper's M40 and M160 optical routers, and Ciena's CoreDirector. These products are completely compatible and complementary and will be bundled and jointly marketed by both firms.
Juniper's routers are rapidly taking market share from Cisco. The CoreDirector will take market share away from the SONET vendors, ie Nortel, Fujitsu, etc. The CoreDirector is the only product of its kind, and it is just about ready to ship. There appears to be plenty of pent-up demand, as a half dozen potential customers are running field trials, and I understand, there were a half dozen more clamoring for the device. Qwest has already committed to purchase the CoreDirector, subject to field trials.
You may have seen this article from Fiber Optics Online, but it may pay to read it again, several times.
Emphasis added. - JGH
Ciena Executives Extol Rapid Optical Provisioning Prowess
5/10/2000 Executives at Ciena Corporation (Linthicum, MD), a veritable old-timer among a torrent of optical networking of start-ups, remain sanguine about the company's ability to meet the needs of optical networkers, without necessarily adopting the latest technology trend. A series of interviews that began with Ciena chief scientist Victor Mizrahi's commentary on optical devices continues with the company's outlook on core switching and transport.
To put a dialogue about core switching into context, Ciena executives cite several quotes from carriers to secure an OC-3 (155 Mb/s) circuit across the country. Prices come in at $90,000, $150,000, and $295,000. Per month. Lead times ranged from 45 to 80 days, with no guarantees.
As opposed to the urgent need for bandwidth expansion that created the robust dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) market, rapid bandwidth delivery drives the need for new core switching technology, according to Ciena. The company also notes that despite the foregone conclusion that 10 Gb/s signals rule the optical backbone, switches and routers with 10 Gb/s interfaces are not yet widely available, creating latent demand for 10 Gb/s pipes.
What carriers need
Network operators are facing a new wave of competition for bandwidth services from carriers that have newer, lower-cost infrastructures. In the past, the architecture with the most optical channels was the winner. Now the operator able to deliver bandwidth the fastest wins. "If there's a network operator that can give [bandwidth] to you tomorrow, you'll probably get it from them, especially if it can hit the right price point," explains Ciena chief technical officer Steve Alexander.
The architecture best apt to deliver bandwidth rapidly at low cost is one with big, fast, capable switches connected by big, high-capacity bandwidth pipes, Alexander explains. No single device can adeptly switch at the STS-1 level (52 Mb/s), wavelength level (2.5 Gb/s, 10 Gb/s), and fiber level (transparent optical switching), he maintains. With an eye toward graceful migration to wavelength-level and fiber-level granularity, Ciena opted for a switch with STS-1 granularity because it scales most elegantly for network needs today.
Ciena's CoreDirector core switch, supplemented by hardware and software tools dubbed LightWorks, promises to deliver any unit of bandwidth anywhere at any time, unbound by synchronous optical network or synchronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) structure. As carriers trial the CoreDirector, Ciena expects to see live traffic carried on the system by mid-year.
Toolkit
To supplement the switch technology and deliver on the promise of anytime/anywhere bandwidth, Ciena has developed what it dubs wavelength binding, flexible concatenation, and very-short-reach optical interfaces.
Wavelength binding combines arbitrary numbers of wavelengths to form a single virtual wavelength. The procedure is similar to inverse multiplexing?it de-couples the data rate running on the network with the data rate running as a service.
Flexible concatenation grabs any available time slots in a SONET frame and concatenates them into an optical carrier of arbitrary size, instead of the protocols' defined signals (OC-3 [155 Mb/s], OC-12 [622 Mb/s], OC-48 [2.5 Gb/s], etc.). It eliminates the need for span grooming.
Interfaces for the CoreDirector are a straightforward proposition at 2.5 Gb/s because the optics are relatively inexpensive. But going to 10 Gb/s requires a special short-reach optical interface for interconnections within equipment spaces to be cost-effective. Rather than a simple serial link, the best option turned out to be arrays of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL), with 12-fiber ribbons. "I had to learn about multimode fiber," admits chief scientist Mizrahi. "Whatever works," he concludes.
Pipes in between
Connecting the switches is good-old DWDM in Ciena's network vision. "I think 10-G will be a really hot seller this year," says Ciena long-haul product director Dave Evans.
The 10 Gb/s equipment is ready to ship, Evans says. What's holding up a blowout OC-192 transport market is that carriers have nothing to connect at OC-192 but SONET. If a carrier commits to SONET, it faces rationing by the few vendors that can deliver the equipment, he reports.
Most carriers want to deploy IP routers with OC-192 interfaces, but these interfaces are not yet ready for volume deployment, Evans says. The result is a latent explosion of demand for 10 Gb/s transport equipment, which may be triggered by the recent availability of routers with OC-192 interfaces (see Juniper, Ciena Perform 10 Gb/s DWDM and Core Router Interoperability).
To tide customers over until widespread OC-192 interface availability, Ciena developed a 4:1 mux for 10 Gb/s transport, that combines four OC-48 (2.5 Gb/s) signals into one 10 Gb/s signal for transport. This cost-effectively loads available OC-48 ports onto a 10 Gb/s transport platform.
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