Optical’s common cause

ATLANTA--Interoperability across multivendor optical networks is a mouthful, but it’s a phrase on the lips of a lot of equipment vendors at Supercomm. The process was demonstrated in public for the first time at the Optical Internetworking Forum's (OIF) booth.

"We have to interoperate both with core and edge optical players, either from a router perspective or from new multiservice platforms. So, supporting interoperability through OIF's user-network interface (UNI) signaling protocol is an important part of our strategy," says Pete Chadwick, vice president marketing at Avici Systems. Concurrent with the OIF demonstration, and using the OIF’s UNI protocol, Avici also demonstrated dynamic bandwidth provisioning between its router and Ciena switches.

The OIF, a non-profit organization comprised of more than 300 vendors and carriers, demonstrated automated provisioning with its Optical UNI 1.0 specification. A total of 25 optical vendors participated in the demonstration. Adam Dunstan, president of the OIF, says there is still progress to be made, particularly in the specification’s service discovery aspect.

Equipment vendors agree that ultimately carriers will be a primary driving force behind the implementation of OIF standards. In the meantime, testing will continue before the standards are actually in use on networks. 

“Before we actually [can create a product from the OIF UNI], there will be additional discussions around the standards to make them more robust. As it stands, we probably could [have a product] in six months, but carriers are still looking at how it can best be utilized, given their current set of products and future equipment purchases,” says Chadwick.

“Carriers, which comprise a separate component of the OIF, are pushing to get that worked out and I expect there to be some level of deployment of UNI before year’s end,” says Dunstan. “As it stands now, they’re already voting in favor of it with their feet.”
Steve Skobel is staff editor for Telecom Business. He can be reached at sskobel@intertec.com.