Globalcomm: New start-up takes ROADM to the edge

CHICAGO--A new subsystem start-up is emerging from stealth mode at the Globalcomm trade show this week, proposing to take reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADM) from core and metro networks to the edge.

The new firm, Nistica, was formed with a recently closed $4 million round of funding and a group including former employees of Photuris, the ROADM vendor that was acquired two years ago by Mahi Networks, which was itself acquired by Meriton Networks last year.

Starting at Globalcomm, Nistica will begin selling a line of ROADM subsystems meant to live downstream from the ROADMs that today sit in core and metro networks. Like its predecessors, Nistica’s wavelength-selective switching ROADMs remotely reconfigure optical signals without the need for costly and time-consuming manual intervention--but they do it at the network edge, with lower capacity links.

“There’s a tremendous need for automating the edge of the optical network,” said Ashish Vengsarkar, Nistica’s chief executive officer. “There’s this huge gap in between the [passive optical network] area and the metro core.”

Nistica offers three ROADM subsystems for equipment vendors: the smallest, the Fledge Three, lets users start with just one wavelength and may be best suited to enterprise networks. The next largest, the Fledge Ten, is expected to be the most widely applicable, covering a “sweet spot” of four to eight wavelengths. The largest, the Full Fledge, can add or drop up to 16 wavelengths.

The gear is being trialed now by 10 equipment vendors, Vengsarkar said, and all three products will become generally available to equipment vendors in the fourth quarter. At that pace, vendors could begin introducing the gear to carriers next spring, he said.