Optical vendors go big at NXTcomm

Optical equipment vendors at the NXTComm trade show this week are racing to meet the rising tide of carrier network traffic with new and more powerful products, all echoing the imperative for bigger, faster networks.

Sycamore Networks is doubling the capacity of its biggest optical switch, which fills three bays, to a whopping 2.5 Tb/s. The system was designed to be able to carry that much traffic back in 2000, when Internet traffic projections were through the roof. What was irrational exuberance then, however, is reality now.

“We chose not to deploy that capacity back then because there was no demand for it,” said Kevin Oye, vice president of systems and technology for Sycamore. “Now our customers are saying their [1.25 Tb/s] systems are getting tapped out, and they could use additional capacity.”

With increases in video traffic flooding carrier networks, capacity upgrades are a recurring theme among optical product announcements at the show across all segments of the market. Turin Networks, for example, which focuses largely on rural telcos, is adding a new 10 Gb/s Ethernet module to the 10, 100 and 1000 Mb/s modules of its Traverse multiservice transport switch.

Meanwhile, Ciena, supplier for some of the world's largest carriers, is adding a new 40 Gb/s shelf to its CN 4200 multiservice transport platform. In addition, Ciena is introducing a much larger 16-slot version of its four-slot 4200. The new 4200 RS contains 96 ports per chassis; carriers can link together up to 56 subtended units to build a platform capable of handling more than 5000 services. And a year after Ciena added a one-degree wavelength-selective switch (WSS) reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) to the 4200, it is quadrupling the product's size, giving carriers a four-degree ROADM in a box.

“The creation of the [16-slot] CN 4200 RS was driven by customer demand for a bigger, denser chassis,” said Steve Alexander, chief technology officer for Ciena. “Large customers [were] stacking multiple CN 4200s at locations where they needed large channel counts to keep pace with services growth.”

ECI Telecom is also supersizing its ROADM. At NXTComm, the Israeli vendor is announcing that this fall, it will double the power of its 10-degree XDM WSS ROADM from 40 wavelengths to 80. Though ROADMs can attenuate signals, ECI claims to overcome this effect using a “bandwidth-tolerant” modulation format for 50 GHz-spaced filters that it demonstrated at an optical trade show in March.

Using this approach, ECI's transponders and amplifiers will extend the reach of its ROADM from about 1500 kilometers to 2000. The vendor is also planning to announce having sold its ROADM to a consortium of independent U.S. telcos, which are using it to build a statewide regional backbone network.

Nortel Networks is adding a few enhancements to its Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 platform. Some time this year, the vendor is adding an integrated ROADM and amplifier to the 6500. That move is consistent with a general trend among vendors to try to simplify the network by adding ROADM functions to Sonet and Ethernet switching platforms.

Next month, Nortel is also adding a plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) gateway to the 6500 that will allow carriers to offer Ethernet services over existing copper lines. The 6500 gateway is intended for use with customer premises equipment from Anda Networks, Nortel's new partner. Specifically, the PDH gateway will work with Anda's EtherReach 2000 series of products, delivering carrier Ethernet services over bonded G.SHDSL or bonded DS-1s, DS-3s and OC-3s.