February 7, 2000

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Internet Drives Demand For Optical Networks

By Peter Heywood

here's nothing new about fiber optics, so why has light-based telecom become such a hot topic? The simple answer: the Internet.

More precisely, the success of the Internet has resulted in an explosion of traffic on public networks, which has left carriers with three big problems: They haven't had enough fiber in the ground to cope with demand; their existing networks haven't been designed to handle traffic efficiently; and traffic growth has become unpredictable.

Consequently, vendors have raced to come up with solutions to the carriers' problems, realizing that huge new markets for optical networking equipment are opening up. Dense wavelength division multiplexing equipment, which sets up multiple wavelengths of light over a single fiber, is a huge growth area. Using this technology, carriers can multiply the capacity of their networks significantly--by more than a hundredfold today.

The next big breakthrough promises to be the elimination of electrical interfaces in carrier backbones. Light pulses now have to be converted to electricity to regenerate their proper shape at intervals and in order to switch them onto different routes at junction points. If all of these electrical conversions could be eliminated, carriers could set up wavelengths of light from end to end over their backbones. This would result in massive savings in equipment--as much as 80%, according to some vendors. Upgrading networks to handle higher bandwidth would also become much easier and faster.

Vendors also are trying to boost the capacity of networks by developing technologies that pack more traffic inside each wavelength. Carriers now use synchronous optical network and asynchronous transfer mode to carry traffic over fiber. As more optical equipment becomes available, carriers may eliminate Sonet and ATM altogether and connect routers directly to wavelengths. Or, vendors may reengineer Sonet so that it's more data-friendly. Such advances promise to bring low-latency, high-bandwidth services to the masses for the first time. That's going to ramp up Internet traffic volumes enormously, fueling demand for still more optical networking innovations.

Return to the main story, "IT At The Speed Of Light."

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