Tellium tames optical network design

At the OFC conference this week in Anaheim, Calif., Tellium announced a beta customer and a new software suite.

Tellium’s Aurora Optical Switch now is shipping with a 10 Gb/s interface to support OC-192 and Qwest Communications is interested, said Grace Carr, vice president of marketing for Tellium. “Qwest has completed its initial tests,” she said.

The higher-capacity optical switch will allow Qwest to support OC-192 and maintain OC-48 grooming capabilities. The switch support 512 OC-48c ports or 128 OC-192c ports up to 1.28 Tb/s and can be used in ring or mesh topologies.

To help carriers determine how to configure a new network or optimize their existing networks, Tellium developed the StarNet Software Suite. Building on Tellium’s existing software tools, the suite contains five components: StarNet Design Tools, StarNet Planner, StarNet Modeler (integrated with the Planner tool), StarNet Operating System (OS) and StarNet Wavelength Management System (WMS). Qwest is using the Modeler tool.

The tools can automatically discover equipment on the network and tap into existing network element databases, said Dick Barcus, president and COO of Tellium.

“If you are starting from scratch, you can use a common database. If you have a network, you can use the same information you are running your network on. If you have rings and you want to try a mesh environment, we can show you how to optimize and manage it, and we can make assumptions on the restorations times, capital costs and provisioning,” he said.

Mesh networks are financially more economical, yet no one has deployed an optical mesh network, Barcus added. “Based on all the non-emotional factors…mesh is a clear winner by a big, big margin.”

The hold up comes from the emotional factors--“Do I want to be the first one to do this?”—and the complex integration of billing, ordering and provisioning services, which was a key driver in the creation of the software suite, Barcus added.

Carriers “can test the what-ifs. How will [a change] impact the cost, provisioning, and restoration times,” he explained. “If you move from ring to mesh, what’s the impact on the fiber utilization? And once you are in one of those camps, how can you squeeze the costs down?…The software platform is an umbrella for the whole thing.”