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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: noj who wrote (8203)	8/25/2000 11:07:58 AM
From: noj	Respond to of 12823

Engineers are debating the merits of transparent and opaque optical networks. Some companies want to switch telephone transmission to Internet protocol; others think connections are crucial for good telephone quality. It's going to take time to pull it all together. "Solution" is a badly overused marketing buzzword, but Harris points to a real problem when he says: "Today there are a lot of new network elements that are being developed and coming into the marketplace, but very few optical networking solutions." He wants not just optical switches, but systems that let him manage his network. He expects that to take a few years. "Management of the all-optical network is probably going to be one of the biggest challenges we face," agrees Hudson of Nortel. Without management, the network can't operate. The race to develop optical networks has barely started. The entrants are still figuring out their strategies. They have yet to be finalized, and the finish line has yet to be drawn. How far and how fast fiber optics bring bandwidth to business and home users will shape the field. All we can be sure of now is that, with the tremendous talent and the stakes involved, it's going to be one hell of an interesting and important race. The telecommunications industry can't match the Pentagon's penchant for cryptic acronyms and buzzwords, but it's not for lack of trying. It looks like the marketers are closing in on the generals. Here are some key words in the optical networking lingo: Backhoe fade: Reputedly the most common cause of cable failure. Cross-connect: A switch able to connect any input port to any output port, like the telephone network. DWDM: Dense wavelength-division multiplexing; packing wavelengths close together to cram even more signals through a fiber. "Dense" is not formally defined. IP: Internet protocol; the way of packaging data in packets for Internet transmission. Lambda: Optics-geek slang for a wavelength channel in a multi-wavelength system. MEMS: Micro-electromechanical systems; tiny moving mirrors used as optical switches. Multiplexing: Merging multiple signals to make a single signal. OADM: Optical add/drop multiplexer; drops one or more wavelength channels at a node and picks up one or more additional channels to replace them. Photon: A quantum of light; explained in detail in Physics 101. Protection switching: Redirecting optical signals to a backup fiber after backhoe fade. Provisioning: Providing telecommunication services by founding routes for signals through the network. Ring: A fiber cable run in a ring and equipped with protection switches so all points can still get service after the cable breaks. Sonet: Synchronous Optical Network; a standard for fiber optic telephone transmission developed before WDM. Tera-: Prefix meaning trillion; companies using it in their names may be hoping to lure terabucks from investors. TDM: Time-division multiplexing; interleaving several digital signals to make a faster digital signal with more bits per second. WDM: Wavelength-division multiplexing; sending several signals through the same fiber at different wavelengths. A bit of basic physics explains why electronic switches are better-developed than their optical counterparts. Electrons interact with the world more strongly than light. Electric charges interact strongly with each other, electric or magnetic fields, and matter in general. Normally, a stray electron can't go very far before something picks it up. Lightning may seem to be an exception, but it only occurs after a tremendous amount of electric charge has accumulated to punch its way through the atmosphere. Light interacts more weakly with the world around it, and even more weakly with other light waves. Light zips easily through air in straight lines, losing little energy. It goes straight through transparent materials with little change. The stronger the interactions, the easier it is to make switches. Electronic switches can be tiny because the electrons interact strongly with matter. Optical switches take more ingenuity. URL: upside.com