Nils,
Thanks for the balancing effects. You note,
>Even if LVLT vision of the future will take longer than planned, or mutates (as it probably will), they are starting from (virtually) zero. This means their risk/reward picture is a lot prettier than the telcos/ISPs, etc. I mean, if you have little or no customers, revenues, etc. you will have a hard time doing worse, right? :)<
It will most assuredly mutate, I agree. They are no longer a pure play IP carrier, and I think that it was questionable to make that assertion in the first place. They are facing reality, despite the pressures to cater to the new digerati genre and to convince otherwise. Fact is that if they wish to attract the traffic from a growing number of large enterprises, they will come to accommodate ATM and Frame on a regular basis, as well as fast layer three, since each of these [particularly ATM, in growing numbers, in the largest of firms] are the aggregation methods now being selected by business who wish to reduce administration and access headaches of many origins, not to discount the cost advantages of reducing port counts and related charges.
What I was positing was that there is natural motivation by both camps to acquire the best attributes _and_ personnel that the other has to offer. As further evidence of this, see what SUPERCOMM, that traditionally staunch bastion for LECs and IECs of all Telecom Shows, has on their agenda. You may want to go to the following url and click on Smarter and Wider: (I've also snipped what I thought was relevant lower below.)
internettelephony.com
Vendors do not invest heavily in R&D, and then in product development and releases, without input from their larger customers and the traditional dollar spenders in their space. Granted, the show's attendance now includes players from every persuasion, but that is only further evidence and support of my position.
A sampling from the above url demonstrates how far the lure extends for new IP and dense WDM related features in emerging platforms:
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Smarter and Wider - JASON MEYERS
Switching and transport vendors at Supercomm '98 will appeal to carriers' need for speed and efficiency. As the long-time annual gathering spot for so-called traditional network operators, Supercomm has always attracted both the established names and the newcomers in the switching and transmission realms--the vendors that supply the core facilities of carrier networks. The exhibit floor at this year's Supercomm promises innovations from many of them, but the audience these solutions are geared toward has expanded beyond the mainstays in local and long-distance service to include competitive local exchange carriers and even Internet service providers.The program away from the show floor also will offer plenty for the wireline enthusiast.
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A session on broadband services will feature representatives from Motorola, IXC Communications, 3Com and Ascend Communications and will cover topics such as optical networking, voice over frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode. A multimedia session will feature speakers from companies such as Fujitsu Network Communications, Orckit and Copper Mountain discussing digital subscriber line (DSL) and other high-speed access technologies.
But it is the Supercomm '98 exhibition area where vendors boasting high-speed switching and transmission technology will be doing their best to meet the burgeoning demands of a wider range of carriers.
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Many of [the vendors] plan to exhibit gear that addresses the issues of diminishing space and growing capacity requirements within the central office.
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Vendors of edge and programmable switching technology will be on hand to show carriers how all types of operators can use their boxes for applications such as Internet protocol (IP) telephony, calling cards, voice-activated dialing, single-number services and other intelligent network functions. Summa Four will unveil Project Sigma, a programmable platform developed and marketed with Dialogic Corp. The telco-targeted switch supports up to 16,000 time slots and features a Windows NT-based application development environment.
Excel Switching Corp. will use Supercomm to highlight its programmable switching platform, which is targeted at emerging service providers such as CLECs and ISPs. It offers a software-based environment that gives them the flexibility to account for uncertainty about future network requirements.
[fac: XLSW also offers a new suite of IP Telephony protocol conversion, i.e., gateway features, that the article omits mentioning]
"Who knows what services you're going to need to implement?" says Bob Hannah, vice president of marketing at Excel. "If you put programming in the hands of creative people, they can turn that into applications."
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NetCore, another scheduled Supercomm exhibitor, recently joined the fray by introducing a large-scale switching platform that integrates ATM switching with IP routing capabilities (Figure 1). The vendor's Everest Integrated Switch is targeted at carriers and ISPs that want to provide multiple levels of Internet services, particularly lucrative business-class services and virtual private network offerings that require carriers to guarantee performance.
"That requires a switch that's smart enough to sort the traffic out," says John Shaw, vice president of marketing at NetCore. "As information's coming into the network, it's entering a multilayer switch that does ATM routing and IP switching."
Everest's ability to identify IP service flows and map them onto ATM virtual circuits is crucial to meeting ATM's quality of service levels, Shaw says. Everest also can be integrated into networks without upgrading switches and routers or introducing new or proprietary protocols.
Lighting the way
Many vendors will showcase transport systems at this year's Supercomm show, and a majority of them plan to feature dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) solutions that answer carriers' burgeoning need for capacity and speed over fiber.
Fujitsu will introduce its Flashwave WDM, a 32-channel platform that works with OC-192, OC-48 or a combination of the two. The vendor will also feature its Flash-192 add/drop multiplexer (ADM), an OC-192 long-haul transport system that features four-fiber bidirectional line-switched rings.
Lucent's booth at Supercomm will feature a "Terabit Office" with live demonstrations of products from the vendor's WaveStar DWDM line as the central focus, says Kathy Szelag, vice president of market planning for Lucent's Optical Networking Group.
"We're going to create a central office in about 40 feet of space," Szelag says. The demo will show carriers how they can deliver Sonet, ATM and IP capabilities in any combinations.
"We want to show the modularity of the product line and show how carriers can combine technologies," she says. Lucent also will demonstrate the capabilities of the WaveStar bandwidth manager.
NEC America will debut dynamic wavelength provisioning functions for its SpectralWave DWDM system at Supercomm.
"One of the things we're going to add to differentiate in the local market is some unique optical networking functions," says Steve Cortez, manager of product marketing at NEC. The benefit of dynamic wavelength provisioning is that it eliminates the need for optical filters.
"Local carriers--especially CLECs--are going to be competitive in wavelength allocation," Cortez says. "Once optical unbundling starts to occur, DWDM will become a bit more pervasive [in local networks]."
NEC also will feature the ITS 2400 ADMs, the Vista low-speed Sonet multiplexer and the ISC 303 digital loop carrier at the show.
Cambrian Systems will highlight its DWDM solution at Supercomm. The vendor will demonstrate its OPTera system, a survivable ring-based architecture that features protocol and bit-rate independence. Cambrian's system focuses on transporting gigabit Ethernet traffic between LAN sites without requiring conversion to a WAN-friendly format, a capability demonstrated last month at Networld+Interop with Bay Networks, 3Com and Packet Engines.
Tellium will feature its MetroXpress WDM transport system, which is designed for metropolitan networks (Figure 2). MetroXpress offers up to 128 wavelengths on a single fiber over 200 kilometers before requiring regeneration. Tellium also will display its Marathon 64-wavelength WDM transport system.
Ericsson will be active in the transport area as well, featuring its Erion Networker DWDM platform for metro, interoffice and long-haul networks over a common platform. The system offers ring survivability, and terminals can be configured as optical terminal multiplexers for point-to-point transport or as optical ADMs without requiring optical switches. The survivability features mean that carriers transporting IP and ATM traffic over the DWDM system don't need additional Sonet equipment to ensure restoration, according to Ericsson officials. Ericsson's Erion system also features a stand-alone network manager for fault, performance and security management.
Scientific-Atlanta will feature its own DWDM platform, the vendor's most recent addition to its Prisma optoelectronics product line. Prisma DWDM is an eight-channel platform that can multiplex up to eight Prisma Digital Transport systems over the same fiber, providing network operators 128 channels of video transmission per fiber at an aggregate rate of 20 Gb/s. Prisma Digital Transport is a Sonet/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) system.
Pirelli Cables and Systems, Ciena Corp. and Osicom also plan to feature their DWDM products at Supercomm '98.
Along the road
A slew of other transport products at Supercomm will highlight economical ways to move traffic at increasingly higher rates.
Tellium will highlight its optical cross-connect, which is designed to offer Sonet-like survivability for WDM-based fiber rings. The Aurora cross-connect will offer 64 bidirectional optical ports by year-end 1998 and will be increased to 128 or 256 ports next year, says Farooque Mesiya, Tellium's chairman and president. Alcatel plans to have its 1631 SC and 1633 SX cross-connects working in a live interoperability demonstration. The vendor will demonstrate IP switching between networks hosted by IBM 2216 routers on one side and Cisco 12008 GSR routers on the other. Alcatel also will launch its Optinex 1640 optical ADM and feature its Optinex 1680 optical gateway cross-connect.
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Later, Frank C. |
