Mad about the metro

Effort, money and hype always follow what the general telecommunications consensus thinks will be the next great field of green in the industry, particularly at Supercomm. Last year, ultralong-haul transport was one of the hottest topics, while voice over DSL was all the rage in 1999.

This year, both were treated like yesterday's rock stars, with the spotlight instead shining on those equipping the metropolitan areas and bringing connectivity as close to customers as possible. And there was good reason: Service providers don't seem to be curbing spending in metro as strongly as in other areas.

In trying to find ways to tackle the complex metro area cost-effectively, service providers seem to be willing to consider newer technologies, such as metro dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) and gigabit Ethernet, in addition to gear designed to upgrade existing Sonet architectures.

“Last year was the year of long haul; this year, the shift is to the metro core and metro access,” said Kris Shankar, chief technology officer for Ericsson spinoff Metro-Optix.

Turn it up a notch

Unclogging bottlenecks in one area of a network often highlights just as many needy spots. As many service providers migrate their core networks to OC-192 speeds, they are left with equipment that still isn't up to par with other portions of their networks.

After rigorous testing and trials, Cisco Systems finally rolled out its 10 Gb/s interfaces for the ONS 15454 metro optical transport system. According to Carl Russo, Cisco's group vice president for optical networking, the upgrade is simple: Service providers need only hot-swap the interface card without having to take down the entire system.

“You just pop it in and go,” Russo said.

To give service providers better flexibility, the unit can transport metro optical traffic over multiple traffic topologies and varieties, according to Russo. The box can support 16 protected OC-12 ports in one shelf. Cisco also developed a new quad gigabit Ethernet card for the unit that lets service providers carry 64 wavelength customers on one metro ring.

But competitors such as Metro-Optix are gunning for the same space, apparently taking a spot alongside Cisco's equipment in Genuity's network.

Although Cisco won the primary-vendor designation, Metro-Optix's CityStream metro-optical platform apparently is taking the secondary slot, although Genuity has not released details about the rollout or vendors.

The CityStream product is 300% larger than the Cisco equipment on the backbone side, according to Shankar. “Density is always an issue,” he said.

‘There has been a big change in the overall market since a year ago, when customers would build out networks and hope customers would come.’ — Hugh Martin ONI Systems

Shankar believes Metro-Optix is getting added mileage from the physical design of the product. The product was designed to meet co-location specifications in foreign markets that require port accessibility from the front and the back of a unit, letting service providers place the equipment back to back as a space-saving measure. “No one else can do that,” Shankar said.

ONI Systems went into the show with smiles, having just won the business of Dynegy Global Communications and an extension of its relationship with Telseon. Dynegy and Telseon recently agreed to develop an 18-city optical network using ONI's Online Transport platform.

“We realized we needed liquidity and connectivity into the metro,” said Walter Fleming, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Dynegy. “We wanted to go deeper into the metro. That gave rise to look for opportunities [such as the one with Telseon].”

The two companies have a symbiotic relationship, according to Telseon CEO John Kane.

“We are helping each other,” Kane said. “And with ONI's DWDM equipment, we have the ability to create any-to-any protocol. That opens up a whole new product set.”

Such deals reflect a general shift sweeping through the industry, according to Hugh Martin, CEO of ONI Systems. “There has been a big change in the overall market since a year ago, when customers would build out networks and hope customers would come,” Martin said.

Now service providers wait until demand from customers and potential customers reaches a certain level before expending capital to enter a market. “We like the idea of integrating a broader suite of services,” Kane said.

While integrating more services is important, so is the critical time it takes to turn up those services.

Through the use of the ONI equipment, the providers can provision an OC-48 circuit in a fraction of the normal time, according to Fleming. Combined with protocol agnosticism, this feature will help enable bandwidth trading in the future, he said.

Core competencies

While ONI was revealing its deal with Dynegy and Telseon, Nortel Networks announced that it reeled in Sprint's Local Telephone Division, Call-Net Enterprises, Korea Telecom and Telecomm Developpement as customers for its metro optical and optical Ethernet equipment. Sprint LTD will use Nortel's OPTera Metro 5200 products in Las Vegas to build its first OC-192 network.

Service providers want to reduce the cost of ownership, accelerate time to market, and create new revenue-generating services, said Anil Khatod, chief marketing and strategy officer for Nortel.

At Supercomm, Nortel demonstrated what it calls the first tunable laser used in a metro optical DWDM system. Developed for use in Nortel's OPTera Metro 5000 optical platform, the laser is supposed to enable more flexibility and dynamic bandwidth provisioning.

“The tunable lasers make it possible to isolate, route and manage individual wavelengths,” Khatod said. “That alleviates costly inventory management.”

‘There are big opportunities in the metro space.’ — Pat Nettles, Ciena

Also trying to provide flexibility and efficiency, Alcatel touted its new metro DWDM system, the 1696 Metro Span (see figure). The unit supports 32 DWDM channels and is targeted at the any-rate/any-protocol lure.

“You get the efficiency of Sonet without having to use Sonet for that restoration,” said Glenn Nelson, director of strategic marketing and requirement for Alcatel's optical division. “That makes networks a lot cheaper.”

And considering the blossoming demand for metro optical equipment, vendors are eager to grab a piece of the revenue pie in this arena, so they aren't left only providing solutions for markets only yesterday's high-demand markets.

“We want to own the core and attack the edge,” said Pat Nettles, Ciena's Executive Chairman.

So far, Ciena's purchase of Cyras has paid off as an entryway for Ciena into the metro market. The company recently announced AT&T as a customer for the K2 product.

“There are big opportunities in the metro space,” Nettles said, noting that the key to success is having the right suite of products at the right time.

Others agreed with that sentiment.

“On the metro side, there is a push to move from Sonet to transparency,” said Ian Viney, senior director of product marketing for Luxcore.

While some are trying to downplay Sonet, others are still standing by it. Fujitsu revealed its new OC-192 capability for its FLASH 2400 ADX Sonet add/drop multiplexer, which can serve two OC-192 systems in one shelf, according to Floyd Ferguson, director of strategic marketing for Fujitsu Network Communications.

In it for the long haul

While metro optical announcements grabbed headlines at the show, developments to bring more scale and efficiency in the long-haul and ultralong-haul spaces also were strong. However, with many service providers just finishing buildouts to their core networks, grabbing their attention to pay for further upgrades in the space is a tough proposition for vendors.

Hitachi Telecom pulled its new 128-channel DWDM system out from under wraps at the show. That product is capable of carrying optical traffic up to 8000 km at a speed of 10 Gb/s without the need for expensive regenerations or Raman amplification.

The Advanced Multiservice Network 6100 uses gain tilt compensation — a technique that compensates for noise normally introduced in optical transport — to achieve that longer reach, said Alan Lewis, director of business development for Hitachi Telecom.

“Other vendors have a traditional DWDM system typically that uses Ramen amplifiers,” Lewis said.

Instead, the Hitachi product uses less expensive erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and the gain tilt compensators to gain the extra distance.

While vendors such as Cisco have abandoned their pursuit of an optical switch for the core, Nortel Networks demonstrated its all-photonic switch at the show. That product is the result of Nortel's acquisition of Xros and is called the OPTera Connect PX.

“It is a MEMs-based switch,” said Benoit Fleury, director of solutions marketing for Nortel's optical Internet division.

The product currently is in beta testing. According to Fleury, there is a huge market for bandwidth management.

“Right now, there isn't the right level of granularity,” Fleury said. “There is tremendous need for networks to evolve to a more photonic network.”

Make it cheap and easy

With service providers and vendors trying to simplify the metro market, the low cost and simplicity of gigabit Ethernet is getting more attention as service providers seek ways to generate new revenue amid the economic crunch.

Yipes Communications revealed partnerships with several storage service providers at the show. Through these partnerships, Yipes will be able to offer an added service to its customers, while the storage-provider partners instantly gain access to Yipes' customer base.

And as soon as the storage partners link to the Yipes network, “they can sell to anyone on our ring,” said Ron Young, Yipes' co-founder and chief marketing officer.

Additionally, greater economic benefits can be realized because Yipes circumvents incumbent carriers' networks, according to Young. “We can bypass their architecture completely,” he said.

After Supercomm, Telseon and other providers also detailed partnerships with storage providers.

Telseon partnered with Storage Access to develop and deploy 14 Virtual Storage Network Access Points in the New York area. While “network storage is still slow and expensive,” Yipes' Young said he believes the landscape for the industry is shifting.

“It used to be, when service providers couldn't change bandwidth, they couldn't sell services like storage,” Young said. “Things are definitely changing.”