ATLANTA -- Supercomm 2001 -- Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) has announced the first public multivendor demonstration of its all-optical switch, the OPTera Connect PX.

Nortel plans to show the switch running in a trial network with storage devices from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and routers from Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR). The demo is slated to start tomorrow here at Supercomm 2001.

The announcement is significant because it puts a face on how Nortel plans to cope with key optical networking trends, including combining support of multivendor edge devices with photonic switching. On the downside, it looks like the demo's strictly for show, with little information about availability of products or even the actual elements of the demonstration network.

Nortel seems unfazed by the lack of specifics. "This is about the next-generation optical network," says Greg Mumford, president of Nortel's Optical Internet business (see Greg Mumford). "We want to show that we're not only working the cost axis but the revenue axis as well." He says the demo shows ways to use emerging techniques not only to reduce overall capital and operating costs for carriers but to increase revenue by applying traffic control.

Specifically, Nortel says it will show a trial version of its MEMS-based OPTera Connect PX all-optical switch linking an unspecified number of 10-Gbit/s connections in response to requests from Juniper routers and EMC storage systems.

According to Nortel, the key to the demo is Nortel's Optera Smart software series announced earlier this year, which allows the Connect PX to interact in a mesh network with other gear. Optera Smart includes a management and provisioning program that is designed to interact with special software -- the Optera Smart operating system and agents -- embedded in Nortel's switch and in other vendors' gear.

Nortel says Optera Smart uses "early" versions of the Automatic Switched Transport Network (ASTN) to establish links among network devices. ASTN is a user network interface (UNI) specification for optical networks defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

To set up specific types of interconnections among devices -- in this case the Juniper routers, EMC Symmetrix storage systems, and Nortel's Connect PX -- the Optera Smart software deploys a prestandard version of generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS).

Specifically, Optera Smart agents in the Juniper and EMC gear will make requests to the optical network using GMPLS. GMPLS is being defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to allow selective engineering of IP traffic over wavelengths and circuits as well as packetized links.

This demonstration could raise at least as many questions as it attempts to answer, including the following:

It's also interesting that Nortel chose not to include its upcoming OPTera Connect HDX in this demo. That electrically-based optical grooming switch is set to be the linchpin in Nortel's immediate plans to help carriers increase revenues in optical networks (see Nortel's Got a Plan). According to Mumford, the absence of the HDX was deliberate, in order to focus on the Optera Smart software. In the future, he says, the HDX will be used at the network edge to interact with the Connect PX in the photonic core.

For more information on Supercomm 2001, please visit the Light Reading Supercomm 2001 Site.

- Mary Jander, Senior Editor, Light Reading
http://www.lightreading.com