ACADEMIA

Lambda OpticalSystems, the leading developer of all-optical switching solutions, announced the availability of its LambdaNode 2000 all-optical switch and the integrated LambdaCreate network management suite. Lambda OpticalSystems' all-optical solutions eliminate the need for Optical-Electrical-Optical (OEO) conversions that slow high-bandwidth data transmissions in traditional optical networks. The company's next-generation product suite empowers organizations to develop high-performance, cost-effective, agile all-optical networks that support growing requirements for high-bandwidth services and advanced applications. "The notion of an all-optical network has intrigued optical network planners for years, and the great false start of five years ago dealt all-optical networks a bad name," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder, Infonetics Research, "whereas the real failure then was that the equipment was not up to the task: it was premature, un-automated, labor intensive, and very expensive. With the continued development of optical switching components, automatic power monitoring and control, and software controlled provisioning, we are now in a different time. The Lambda OpticalSystems equipment effectively combines all-optical switching with integrated DWDM and a GMPLS control plane, which allows carriers to now think about an efficient all-optical network. An all-optical transport network can result in significant network simplification and a networking environment that is well suited for next-generation, real-time, bandwidth intensive applications." Live demonstration with Naval Research Laboratory In a concurrent announcement, Lambda OpticalSystems revealed it will participate in a continuous, live demonstration with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) at the OFC/NFOEC conference (March 8-10, 2005, Anaheim, CA). The demonstration will stream high definition television (HDTV) and large-scale, InfiniBand-empowered remote visualization applications over a local all-optical network, incorporating two LambdaNode 2000 switches. "There is need of high-bandwidth and low-latency networking capabilities that can handle not only aggregated, but also single streams from 10Gbps to 40Gbps today at the application layer," said Dr. Henry Dardy, Chief Scientist for the Center for Computational Science at the Naval Research Laboratory. "The transport and visualization of such high volume of information requires transparent high bandwidth all-optical network elements, efficient data storage and retrieval by supercomputers locally and across wide-area networks. This demonstration proves that all-optical networks can meet these requirements effectively today."