Oct 19 2007
Alcatel-Lucent today announced that it has set a new standard with its 1626 Light Manager (LM) product. Release 5 1626 LM addresses operators' demand for increased capacity, flexibility, and manageability to support a faster time-to-market for a new breed of blended Internet, video, and triple-play services.
According to the company, the 1626 LM Release 5 provides a unique fully tunable and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplex (search for ROADM) architecture, enabling operators to design, plan, and operate their networks with enhanced agility. Wavelength services can be remotely provisioned end-to-end in minutes with no manual intervention, thus improving end-user experience and generating new value for the existing and addressable customer base. Additionally, the platform meets operators' requirements for scaling their networks from 10G to 40G seamlessly, say company representatives.
"Carriers are beginning to feel the strain of triple-play and other video-caused, unpredictable bandwidth growths, and we are certainly at the infancy stage of an upcoming video traffic shock across fixed and mobile networks," explains Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "Regional and core WDM networks must evolve both in capacity and flexibility. The Alcatel-LucentI1626 LM Release 5 offers service providers much greater network agility to flexibly add and drop wavelengths and capacity when, where, and if the economics prove in, without service-interrupting upgrades and traffic forecast errors," he says.
Alcatel-Lucent says the 1626 LM Release 5 offers a fully tunable and reconfigurable approach that enables the highest flexibility for end-to-end photonic networking. The product incorporates wavelength selective switch (search for WSS) technology to perform wavelength rerouting in multiple directions (or degrees) within the network. In addition, its fully tunable architecture allows operators to terminate any wavelength (or 'color') in any given point of the network, as service interfaces can be colored from the network operations center (NOC) as necessary according to the specific wavelength.
Furthermore, Alcatel-Lucent says its 1626 LM ReleaseI5 has a fully programmable grid (50 GHz and 100 GHz) for supporting any mix of 10G and 40G wavelengths over the same fiber. The 40GEwavelength transport functionality can be delivered either over the WSS-based tunable and programmable architectureIor over existing 1626 LM deployments as a smooth upgrade path. Because the support of 40G wavelengths is native and not emulated (e.g. 4 x 10G), the 1626 LM is a high-capacity photonic platform able to transport up to 80Iwavelengths at 40G (3.2 Tbits/sec) per direction.
"Simplified network planning and accelerated service provisioning that ease overall maintenance activities across their optical infrastructures are key requirements for telecom and cable operators," notes Romano Valussi,Ipresident of Alcatel-Lucent's optics activities. "With this announcement, we confirm our commitment to further strengthening our value proposition for photonic networks with innovative solutions."