Light on fire: NFOEC'99 showcases optical's metro motion

The migration of complex forms of optical networking into the coveted metropolitan network realm is helping reshape the optical equipment manufacturing field. Last week's National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Chicago captured an industry segment in transition, as vendors focused on adapting their long-haul optical applications to fit the metro slot.

Cisco Systems' recent - and financially staggering - acquisitions of Cerent and Monterey Networks have dominated the optical buzz of late. Many developers of optical gear presumably are gauging their own progress against that of Cisco's and that of optical networking leaders Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks (see story on page 26).

Much of the conference discussion centered on the adaptations required for moving technologies such as dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) from the long-haul environment into the metro. Optical Networks, a developer of metro DWDM systems, argued that wavelength management - a factor that many equipment developers claim is the tripping point - is not the only issue.

"When will DWDM go into metro?" said Hugh Martin, president and CEO of Optical Networks. "The problems are scalability and capacity only, not management." The applications that will push DWDM into the metro are corporate outsourcing to link enterprise to outside data warehouses and wavelength services for running gigabit Ethernet across town to remote data storage sites, Martin said.

Siemens was at NFOEC '99 as a relatively new member of the optical domain. The vendor entered the business with the launch of its optical unit in October 1997 and is confident that its overarching networking capabilities will help it succeed in the optical field.

"It's not the product itself that's always the difference - it's also the need for the customers to know that they're doing business with a company that's reliable," said Michael McLaughlin, vice president and general manager of the optical networks division of Siemens Information and Communication Networks. Siemens introduced a new regenerator for its long-haul DWDM system at the show.

Meanwhile, Qtera discussed its plans to develop photonic optical networking equipment that would potentially eliminate the need for regenerators in long-haul transmission. The company is working to develop a purely photonic backbone that would require only routers to direct traffic, said Fahri Diner, CEO of Qtera. "That's the next step, and it's one that has no capacity boundaries," Diner said.

Several vendors at NFOEC '99 discussed the development of mesh optical network configurations that provide Sonet-like protection without relying on Sonet ring architectures.

Monterey Networks, for example, demonstrated its ReyMaster network simulation tool, which carriers can use to see how mesh network deployment would play out in their networks.

"Mesh networks are more cost-effective and use less restoration bandwidth," said Joe Bass, president and CEO of Monterey.

Monterey also demonstrated the interoperability of its Wavelength Router with NEC's SpectralWave DWDM system at the show.

"We're trying to showcase to carriers that the elements are coming together," said Steve Cortez, manager of product marketing for NEC's transport products division.

The supporting mechanisms of optics also garnered some attention at the National Fiber Optics Engineering Conference in Chicago last week, as several vendors focused on network management and testing aspects of optical networking.

Various developers of optical gear hosted a trial at the show that demonstrated how the element and network management systems associated with their disparate equipment can work together in a multivendor network.

Fujitsu, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks, Siemens, Telcordia and Tellabs participated in the demonstration, which included simulations of end-to-end network provisioning and an example of how network alarms can be identified from a single graphical user interface regardless of the equipment related to the trouble. All the management systems involved in the trial are based on the CORBA interface.

As various vendors showed how their infrastructure equipment can be best managed, Anritsu was focusing on the requirements of testing optical network components in the manufacturing, design and deployment stages. The vendor introduced a new mini-optical time domain reflectometer featuring a chromatic dispersion measurement capability necessary for dense wave division multiplexing applications.

"It gives the guys in the field a feeling for what capacity they can get out of the fiber," said Graham Sperrin, product marketing manager for Anritsu. "The higher speed you go, the more critical it becomes."

Anritsu also introduced a digital data analyzer for testing bit error rate, burst signals and waveform quality. It is designed for R&D and manufacturing testing, particularly for systems optimized for undersea installation, said Munir Bhuiya, field marketing engineer for Anritsu's digital communications unit.