Agilent first to offer high- and low-order LCAS emulation for testing SONET/SDH MSPPs

OmniBER OTN J7230B 10-Gbit/sec analyzer

13 January 2004 Palo Alto, CA Lightwave--Agilent Technologies today announced support for SONET/SDH link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS) at both high- and low-order virtual concatenation levels for its OmniBER OTN J7232A 2.5-Gbit/sec analyzer. The J7232A now gives designers and verification engineers of SONET/SDH multi-service provisioning platform (MSPP) equipment the ability to fully check design conformance to industry standards, thereby ensuring full interoperability of next-generation data services across vendor platforms. LCAS is a key enabler of flexibility in next-generation SONET/SDH data services by providing dynamically variable transport bandwidth to end-users.

In addition, the new OmniBER OTN J7230B product is the first to offer the complete next-generation SONET/SDH test portfolio (including data mappings, GFP encapsulation, high- and low-order virtual concatenation and LCAS) at the 10-Gbit/sec rates of OC-192 and STM-64. Equipment manufacturers and service providers are driving the introduction of next-generation SONET/SDH capability at 10 Gbits/sec in support of flexible Gigabit Ethernet and high-speed fibre channel data applications (including storage area networks). The J7230B also offers support for ITU-T G.709 Optical Channel and all legacy SONET/SDH standards.

Next-generation SONET/SDH is the term applied to recent enhancements and additions to SONET/SDH standards and equipment that enable data services to be carried more efficiently and flexibly. Three new technologies are key to next-generation SONET/SDH:

• GFP encapsulation adapts Ethernet, fibre channel and other data traffic for suitability to a constant bit-rate carrier.

• Virtual concatenation enables SONET/SDH transport pipes to be filled more efficiently with data services by grouping individual SONET/SDH containers into a virtual high-bandwidth link, matched to the required service bandwidth. High-order virtual concatenation containers (55 Mbits/sec and 155 Mbits/sec) are grouped when transporting high-speed data services such as Gigabit Ethernet and fiber channel. Low-order containers (1.5 Mbits/sec or 2 Mbits/sec) are used for low-speed data services such as 10-Mbit/sec or 100-Mbit/sec Ethernet.

• LCAS further enhances the flexibility of SONET/SDH virtual concatenation transport by enabling the addition and removal of virtual link containers in response to an identified change in service bandwidth requirement, or in response to a fault condition in an existing container.

"LCAS is the latest significant building block in the provisioning of next-generation data services by SONET/SDH," said Richard Deboer, chief executive of Galazar Networks, a fabless semiconductor company that delivers carrier-grade, multi-service, Ethernet and data service framers for highly channelized service applications. "LCAS is the most complex, in terms of the protocol 'hand-shaking' between source and destination equipment, therefore stringent interoperability testing was required before our customer could be selected as preferred supplier for next-generation networks. With the ability to fully emulate the operation of a SONET/SDH LCAS terminal, the OmniBER OTN provides an independent validation of MSPP design conformance to industry standards, highlighting at an early development stage any possible interoperability issues."

U.S. pricing and availability
The OmniBER OTN J7232A 2.5 Gbit/sec analyzer starts at a base price of $55,000. The J7232A with options for Ethernet mappings, GFP and virtual concatenation is priced at approximately $104,000, and can be ordered now with current delivery at eight weeks. An LCAS firmware upgrade can also be ordered now for approximately $5,000, with expected delivery in the second quarter of 2004.

The OmniBER OTN J7230B 10-Gbit/sec analyzer starts at a base price of $106,000. The J7230B loaded with Ethernet mappings, GFP, virtual concatenation and LCAS is approximately $155,000 and can be ordered now with expected delivery in the second quarter of 2004.