Nortel dives into CWDM

Anaheim, Calif.--While dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) is typically only affordable for Fortune 200 companies, Nortel Networks hopes to break that barrier with the addition of lower-cost coarse WDM (CWDM) filters to its OPTera Metro 5100 multi service platform. The new products are targeted at medium-sized business customers.

With the equipment, service providers will be able to deploy services over a shared DWDM infrastructure and therefore lower the overall cost of the services. By using CWDM, the cost of providing an optical wavelength decreases by more than 30%, according to Jack Hunt, director of marketing for Nortel’s metro optical division.

“This enables service providers to further leverage their infrastructure,” Hunt said at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference here.

The platform uses an 80 Gb/s switching fabric, which enables traffic to flow freely between core and access rings.

“That way, you don’t need any more equipment,” Hunt said.

Nortel expects the higher bandwidth to be used for services like storage area networking, disaster recovery and streaming media. The product is in trials currently and will be generally available in May.