SCIENCE

LONDON, ENGLAND -- Data Connection Limited (DCL), the world's leading provider of carrier-class communications protocol source code, announced that it is adding the Link Management Protocol (LMP) to its industry leading range of optical networking solutions. The new DC-LMP product family provides OEMs with a flexible source code solution with the same high quality architecture and support for which DCL's other communications software is renowned. LMP is a new protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is designed to ease the configuration and management of next-generation optical network devices. Such devices may be interconnected by thousands of data-bearing links, which are aggregated into a smaller number of traffic engineering links. LMP provides automatic configuration of such devices, negotiation of capabilities, and localization of faults. In addition, the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has defined an optical user-to-network interface (UNI) that allows optical access devices to request light paths through a core network. The OIF UNI extends LMP and Generalized Signaling for MPLS (GMPLS) for use in this process. DC-LMP supports both the function originally defined by the IETF, and the additional extensions required for the OIF UNI. DCL has been involved in the development of both standards, working closely with many of the market leading implementers of this technology. DC-LMP is integrated with DCL's GMPLS and OIF UNI implementations to provide a complete peer or overlay control plane solution for equipment manufacturers building optical devices. "DCL developed first to market carrier-class implementations of GMPLS and the OIF UNI by working with many of the market leaders in those technologies," said Ben Miller, General Manager of DCL's MPLS business. "Adding DC-LMP provides another important piece for our optical customers and confirms our leadership in optical control plane software." DC-LMP runs within DCL's existing high performance portable execution environment - the N-BASE. This provides extensive scalability and flexibility and enables the distribution of protocol components across different hardware configurations. The N-BASE has been ported to a large number of operating systems including VxWorks, OSE, pSOS, Lynx, LynuxWorks, Chorus, Nucleus, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX and Windows NT, and has been used on all common processors including x86, i960, Motorola 860 and 8260, Sparc, IDT and MIPS. Proprietary OSs and chipsets can be supported with minimal effort. In addition, pre-ported solutions are available on a range of operating systems including VxWorks, OSE, Linux, Solaris and Windows. For additional information visit www.dataconnection.com