[NANOG] DWDM

Frank Coluccio frank at dticonsulting.com
Tue Apr 29 19:05:19 UTC 2008


re: "the latest CPL technology from Nortel is a real breakthrough, for once a
vendor has listened and understood the challenges for operators and actively
addressed our concerns."

When CPL was appeared I found its architecture refreshingly straightforward, as
you've also noted, which was best demonstrated (to me, at least) by Kees Neggers
within SURFnet6 throughout the Netherlands about three years ago (thus allowing
him to offload boatloads of Layer3 gear). 

I'm not sure which issue of the Cook Report it was in, but the details of this
SURFnet6 deployment were captured in an interview of Neggers quite nicely by
Gordon Cook in one of his reports during that era.

During the intervening three years, however, advancements in dispersion
management have been introduced and opened the door for some new players, such as
Infinera, whose use of electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) in its WDM
platforms has now given it somewhat of an edge, or so it seems at the moment,
based on the market share it has gained in a very short time. I'm hardly
suggesting that Infinera trumps the former CPL approach across all areas of
design consideration, but only that it's an  approach that merits investigation.

I should note that Infinera went diametrically against the grain of the
"all-optical" holy grail that is commonly sought by many, and actually leverages
its ability to perform functions in the 'electronic' domain a lot more
efficiently than other vendors have been capable of achieving in the purely
optical domain, thus positioning itself in a category that's pretty much all its
own today. I'd be eager to read comments and criticisms from anyone who's had
actual experience with its wares.

Frank A. Coluccio
DTI Consulting Inc.
212-587-8150 Office
347-526-6788 Mobile

On Fri Apr 25  9:31 , "Neil J. McRae"  sent:

>The current technologies for DWDM have really made it technology 
>that's reasonably straight forward to deploy. The last
>generation was a nightmare!
>
>Tuneable optics, dispersion compensation, and ROADM have made
>a substantial difference to deploying and operating DWDM networks.
>
>I had experience with the former generation system from Nortel 
>which although very reliable it was very resource intensive
>to deploy new services, the latest CPL technology from Nortel
>is a real breakthrough, for once a vendor has listened and understood
>the challenges for operators and actively addressed our concerns.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott E. MacKenzie [smackenzie at qf.org.qa','','','')">smackenzie at qf.org.qa]
>Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 4:00 AM
>To: NANOG
>Subject: [NANOG] DWDM
>
>
>Does anyone know where I can locate a list of DWDM networks deployed for
>Education, Science & Research, and Commercialization?
>
>We need to determine the practicality of DWDM use...
>
>
>Scott 
>
>
>
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