OTTAWA -- Optical equipment vendors from around the world are invited to a Request for Proposals issued jointly by CANARIE and ORANO (Ontario Regional Optical Advanced Network Organization) to deploy a next generation ROADM network across southern Ontario with possible extensions to Montreal, Albany and New York City as well as from Windsor to Chicago.

The purpose of this network is to test and develop new and novel optical network architectures and business models for next generation networks as well as provide high bandwidth lightpaths for various eScience applications.

Recently CANARIE, ORANO, NYSERnet in New York and MICHnet in Michigan signed a multi-party MOU to enable bandwidth swapping between our respective optical networks. This will allow the respective networks and their institutions to inexpensively build private optical networks that extend many hundreds of miles beyond their own network territories. As well, through this RFP, institutions and individuals will be encouraged to do their own wavelength insertion and extraction with remote ROADM terminals located on their campuses. As much as possible we want to minimize active electronics and equipment in the core of the network and encourage control and management of individual lightpaths by institutions or users at the edge of the network.

Given that their will be many independent organizations with their own wavelengths and/or lightpaths across the infrastructure a UCLP-like (or Y.1312/Y.1313) type of management system will be essential.

Canarie Inc.