May 2, 2006 Las Vegas, NV -- Lynx Photonic Networks announced that its LightLeader bypass switching system has been selected by the City of Austin, Texas, which is deploying the system to protect its fiber-optic network.
"Optical networks are deployed in a variety of topologies, and protecting them is a critical part of an organization's - or a city's - disaster recovery program," explains Abe Queller, vice president of customer applications at support at Lynx. "While some protocols and topologies, such as SONET rings, offer protection from single-point failures, other topologies, such as linear networks, don't offer any protection at all. What we have seen in the past is the collapse of an entire network due to power outages at one or more nodes."
According to Lynx Photonic, such outages are common during rainy weather; the company says its optical bypass system, which has been successfully deployed in both commercial and military environments, is specifically designed to recover from such events, keeping the optical network up and running. Via the system, failed nodes are bypassed and connectivity is maintained among the rest of the nodes, thus improving overall network resilience, according to the company.
"Because we're now deploying the Lynx bypass system, we expect to see a definite reduction of total network failures due to power outage," comments Malcolm Yeatts of the City of Austin's communication technology management group. "The Lynx system will be a key element in helping ensure the survivability of our network."