4:15 PM -- When Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN) launched its DTN system, we picked the headline "Infinera Declares WDM War." I like that headline. Infinera's mission was to upend dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) philosophy by converting all traffic into electrical form.

Infinera is trying to do the same thing with Optical Transport Network (OTN) transmission, telling the world the DTN can do this better than other DWDM systems can, because it handles traffic in the electrical domain.

Infinera announced today that it's adding OTN interfaces to the ATN and DTN systems. That means those boxes can do more than switch OTN traffic; they can re-groom it while it's in the electrical domain. (See Infinera Launches Digital OTN.)

That's not how OTN has been working, says Serge Melle, Infinera's vice president of technical marketing.

"Any kind of muxponder interface lights a wavelength end-to-end between where the services are coming on and where the services are coming off," Melle says. "So, a wavelength going from San Francisco to Denver isn't going to be able to share with a wavelength going from San Francisco to Chicago."

In other words, Infinera thinks its OTN options can fight stranded bandwidth, the problem that's led to the invention of one optical technology after another. (See Transmode Enhances ROADM and Resilient Packet Ring Technology.)

The approach isn't all that surprising. Every optical company will have an OTN architecture to talk about, and it makes sense for Infinera's to aim at short-circuiting the usual DWDM play.

Infinera might have company, by the way. Melle acknowledges that Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has talked about doing similar things with its OSN 8800. "Huawei is good at looking at a product and trying to emulate it. So, we think Huawei is going to come out with a product with similar capabilities," he says.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading