Light hot: Optical networking picks up (even more) momentum

The never-abating interest in optical networking translates into new products, technologies and vendors. Such is the case this week with the introduction of two new optical equipment vendors. Mayan Networks is developing a product for the metro market, and Calient Networks is focusing on the core (see sidebar).

Mayan Networks will announce today its Unifier SMX device, a multiservice optical access and transport platform that sits at the metro edge. Mayan is in several trials with customers, said Dan Brown, vice president of product management for Mayan Networks.

The Unifier combines the functionality of an add/drop multiplexer (ADM), digital cross-connect and a switch. It aggregates and grooms traffic for transport over Sonet networks, making Sonet more viable for data.

"Sonet is predominantly the main transport used for delivering service in the metro," said Brown. But it developed for voice transport; links jump from T-1 (1.5 Mb/s) to DS-3 (45 Mb/s) to STS-1 (51.84 Mb/s), so incremental growth is hard to provision.

"A 3 Mb/s to 4 Mb/s connection is eating up an entire STS-1 on a Sonet ring. It's inefficient and very costly," Brown said.

Mayan's software "cracks open [the link] down to the DS-0 layer," Brown said. "It splits out the voice from the frame relay traffic, sends voice on to a separate VT1.5 back to the central office and connects into the Class 5 switch directly."

Data is assigned to virtual 1.5 Mb/s links, which customers share. "We distribute the intelligence out around the metro ring. It drives your Sonet efficiency from 20% to 80%," Brown said.

Brown claims the Unifier will cut operational costs by 60% and capital costs by 50%. With those metrics, "we have no problem getting lab time" with carriers, he said.

ADMs now available can aggregate traffic for the Sonet ring, but "they are not capable of performing Layer 2 or Layer 3 functions," Brown said. In contrast, the Unifier is "Sonet interoperable at the [data communications channel] stack layer with signaling and control," he said. "We can coexist on Sonet rings with other ADM players."

The key is being able to cap a carrier's Sonet investment, said Chris Nicoll, director of carrier and infrastructure analysis for Current Analysis. Most start-up vendors in this space "are creating optical service platforms to run IP and ATM, but what is the poor guy stuck on a Sonet ring to do? How do you bring those services to [customers off the metro ring]?" Nicoll asked. "Mayan looks and acts like a Sonet ADM, but it's got a slew of other IP-, ATM- and wavelength management-based features on top of that."

Though much interest has been generated in the metro optical market, core networks still are pushing for all-optical products to boost delivery. Concentrating on the core is Calient Networks, which launched today. The company is developing a photonic switch based on its Scalable Control of a Rearrangeable and Extensible Array of Mirrors, or SCREAM, architecture.

"What we're trying to get at is that the ability to build all-photonic networks is really here," said Tim Dixon, vice president of marketing for Calient.

SCREAM was developed to improve density. The MEMS-based technology allows Calient to support "1000 ports in the space of a sugar cube," Dixon said. "We are focused on software development at a higher layer [and support] a software and service layer on top of the new photonic layer."

Confusion surrounds the all-optical market because many "optical" devices require optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversion, Dixon said.

"The [term] optical switch, or optical cross-connect, has cheapened quickly over the last 18 months," he said. "With the photonic architecture we have, the data path is all photonic. We never change it to electrons." Control processing is electrically done in an adjacent channel, he said.

"Customers can migrate from their costly Sonet infrastructure to an all-photonic architecture," Dixon said. Calient's architecture will support all-photonic and OEO termination types, depending on the application. That will allow smoother migration and reduce long-term dependency on Sonet, he said.

Calient just reeled in $50 million in its second round of financing and has investors such as Juniper Networks, Tellabs and Greylock - a private venture capital firm headed by Charles Chi, the founder of Lightera Networks.

"You're able to tap into a lot of carrier-class expertise on the transport side, with Tellabs and IP switching and routing on the Juniper side," said Chris Nicoll, director of carrier and infrastructure analysis with Current Analysis. "You really can get your hands around what service providers need to do from an operational standpoint to implement this switch. Chi is one guy you definitely want to have on your side."