Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) has unveiled an intelligent optical-data networking platform that it claims will enable customers to cost-effectively provide bandwidth-on-demand and other new revenue-generating services.
Lucent's new platform is built around its all-optical switch - the WaveStar LambdaRouter - and two new software products from Bell Labs. Lucent's new intelligent routing software will enable its all-optical switches to communicate with one another, instantly discover new switches and links as they are added to a network's topology, and automatically redistribute wavelengths in response to fluctuating traffic demands and network resources.
Lucent believes its platform will enable service providers to build highly scaleable, mesh-based networks. In a mesh network environment, each central hub is connected to other hubs by direct links that are based on traffic demand and are individually scaleable. Lucent's two new software packages work hand-in-hand with its all-optical switches and DWDM systems to maximize the reliability and revenue-generating potential of these networks:
Lucent's Optical Services Manager (OSM) is a software platform that provides network operators with such capabilities as "point-and-click" bandwidth provisioning. Using Lucent's OSM software, network operators can remotely direct a LambdaRouter in Chicago, for example, to increase the number of wavelengths it is sending to Seattle and decrease the number it is sending Denver (and vice versa) as traffic between those cities fluctuates. This will enable carriers to offer such revenue-generating services as bandwidth trading, optical virtual private networks, and dynamic bandwidth control, as well as create their own custom services.
Lucent's Optical Network Navigation System (ONNS) will reside within individual LambdaRouters to enable intelligent distributed routing. By enabling the all-optical switches to communicate with one another, the software allows them to continually inventory a network's resources, self-discover changes in the network's topology, and redefine a signal's most efficient path between two endpoints.
Lucent's OSM software is commercially available now. Lucent will begin controlled introduction of its ONNS software in the third calendar quarter of 2001, with commercial availability scheduled for September 2001. The WaveStar LambdaRouter is commercially available now. Lucent already has shipped the LambdaRouter to four customers for trials.