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Bandwidth isn't everything
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August 31, 2000: 1:45 p.m. ET
Cisco, Nortel announce fiber optics improvements at trade show
By Phil Harvey
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SAN FRANCISCO (www.redherring.com) - Optical bandwidth is not yet a commodity. But marketers at Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and other equipment vendors must act as if it is to make their latest offerings sound all the more tantalizing.
Further, as they court telecom-carrier customers with rounds of golf and trade-show trinkets, they need to assure these customers that all the equipment they buy can work together under some common software controls.
This week at the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Denver, both Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks announced software-based improvements to their respective optical product portfolios. These improvements matter not so much in the game of shoving more bits down the network, but in figuring out how to repair networks when they're broken and deliver services that make the raw bandwidth more profitable to telecom carriers.
"What's been happening here is that vendors are coming out with so many different products, the carrier's main concern is how to manage their bandwidth," says Voltaire Cacal, a senior analyst at RHK. This concern is amplified when you consider how many different firms' original products make up the various networking equipment vendors' portfolios.
Test for Access
 Looking beyond raw bandwidth, Cisco announced this week that its soon-to-be-shipping ONS 15900 Wavelength Router will have a test access feature so that carriers can remotely test the performance and integrity of optical circuits. This feature keeps carriers from having to send trucks out each time an optical circuit isn't working right, whether the problem has to do with fizzled components, light wave attenuation, or other glitches. The oft-delayed 15900 is based on technology from Cisco acquisition Monterey Networks.
Cisco also said that Worldcom was in the process of testing the new router, and Petronet, a privately held competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), is using the router for its own network. Cisco, however, isn't expecting any revenues from the Monterey product until later this year.
"The key here is that we're not just focusing on the technology itself, but on the real-world applications of maintaining and managing the networks when all the hype is gone," says Joe Bass, vice president and general manager of Cisco's wavelength routing business and former CEO of Monterey.
Today carriers would have to disconnect the optical fiber from an add/drop multiplexor and connect it to test equipment to survey a problem. This, of course, causes service interruptions and other headaches.
Where this matters to carriers is on their bottom line, Bass says. Carriers still spend about half their money on maintenance and operations, and that requires people and time -- two things carriers don't have enough of. "It matters when you get past the CTO and the network planner down to the operations person who has their butt on the line each day," he says.
Splitting fibers
Separately, Nortel announced Managed Optical Services, a set of software technologies that works across several different Nortel products. This software allows light to be distributed by individual wavelength, making it easier for carriers to buy and sell bandwidth on an as-needed basis.
 Nortel executives weren't available for comment, but the appeal of such services is pretty straightforward: If telecom carriers and ISPs can buy (and resell) only the bandwidth they need, when they need it, all of that money they spent on over-hyped networking gear finally starts to come back around.
While such networking smarts aren't taken for granted by carriers, other equipment providers, such as Riverstone Networks, are doing just that as they look at issues closer to the customer's premises.
"We have been assuming that Layer 2 [the data link layer] is robust, and everyone can provision wavelengths," says Romulus Pereira, CEO of Riverstone Networks. "[Riverstone's switches and routers] are focusing on how to layer IP services [virtual private networks, streaming media, etc.] on top of that."
The optical networking game is about making bandwidth, he says. "We're all about converting that bandwidth into IP services."
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