9 July 2003 Calabasas, CA Lightwave -- Lynx Photonic Networks today unveiled its LightLEADER family of plug-n-play photonic switches. The company has also disclosed that its LightLEADER has been running in a live U.S. government-sponsored experimental transparent optical network known as ATDNet.
ATDNet interconnects several government networking research testbeds and has nodes located in the Washington, D.C., area, including the Laboratory for Telecommunication Sciences (LTS) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). In ATDNet, LightLEADER is currently multicasting 720 progressive scan uncompressed HDTV and ATM/SONET signals transmitted from the NRL to various network elements at the LTS. ATDNet is a transparent all-optical test network that has many research activities and interests designed to evaluate general areas of research in a live networking environment.
LightLEADER is a small optical communications system built around Lynx's patented intelligent optical switch fabrics. According to the company, LightLEADER minimizes the risk and cost associated with both testbed and live production optical applications. LightLEADER switches any optical path or fiber to any other; is data-rate and format independent and can be configured as strictly non-blocking; and can dynamically tap optical lines for monitoring or security intrusion. Moreover, it is extremely flexible and can be used in many other application environments. LightLEADER comes with an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) that is hosted on a PC locally or remotely via an Ethernet connection. LightLEADER can be tailored to manage most port-to-port connectivity requirements, including broadcasting, distance-tuned multicasting, dynamic wavelength switching, and tapping. The built-in attenuation management is useful for applications that require equalization in amplified networks.
LightLEADER offers broad applications capability, including:
• Advanced fiber management
• Wavelength management
• Optical test access
• Revertive intelligent protection switching
• Network restoration management
• Dynamic multicast and broadcast for video applications
• Optical SAN protection and mirroring
• Dynamic reconfigurability for static Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (OADMs)
• "Intrusion" tapping for security applications.
LightLEADER's switching and path management technology is solid state, which means it contains no moving parts. LightLEADER has survived reliability tests performed by an independent test laboratory under live operation, including heating past 130 ° C, freezing to -90 ° C, and vibration testing to 26 gRMS--exceeding that of a fighter jet at maximum G-force.
"PLC-based photonic switching enables reliable, affordable, efficient, point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint optical networks," explains Michael Leigh, president and co-founder of Lynx Photonic Networks. "These networks permit data rate, format, and protocol independence and allow for rapid upgrade and deployment of new equipment and services. We are excited by these accomplishments in a live network setting thus far and will be providing more information on our LightLEADER product family as it rolls out to new customers."