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Jo Maitland
GMT Oct 17, 2000, 08:50 PM | ET Oct 17, 2000, 03:50 PM | PT Oct 17, 2000, 12:50 PM
URL: http://the451.com/index/1,1169,sectors-5-3784-1,00.html
London - Battle for control of the optical equipment market is shifting from winning customers to winning a standards war. The good news is it should all be over by the end of the year. The bad news: Both sides are adamant they are right.
The aim is to develop a signaling and communications mechanism between the electrical and optical worlds, so that routers at the edge of the network can signal the optical layer for more bandwidth. According to the equipment folks, the difference is between turning on services in a matter of hours rather than weeks.
Rick Barry, chief technical officer at Sycamore Networks, talked to the451 about the "mud-flinging" that has been directed at Sycamore's camp, and about why the company still sees itself leading the way. Sycamore belongs to a coalition called the Optical Domain Name Interconnect (ODSI) that was formed in January. It includes 100 or so members, most of whom also participate in the other group, known as the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF).
The OIF was formed in 1998 by Cisco and Ciena and now has over 200 members, including the three big hitters Cisco, Nortel and Lucent as well as almost every optical startup on the block. Most of these vendors are waiting to see whose specification becomes the standard so as not to implement the wrong one.
Put simply, Sycamore believes the intelligence should reside in the IP router, using TCP/IP as the signaling protocol. The OIF's spec supports RSVP and CR-LDP, which offer a bridging between the two layers and can reside anywhere in the network.
The OIF camp argues that you can't rely on a router at the edge of the network to control the functions of the optical equipment at the core. Although, ODSI's backers say, optical switches primarily move broad streams of data at rates of 2.5Gbps or faster, electronic equipment is able to make routing decisions based on the contents of a single packet of data, which provides much more granular control.
The jury is still out.
Tuesday the OIF released a draft document to carriers that lists requirements on what its specification will do. This has been received by carriers such as AT&T, C&W, MCI WorldCom, Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Enron and NTT DoCoMo; they will approve it or request more functions. For example, the document requests that the end specification should support third-party signaling.
This is where Barry at Sycamore begins to jump up and down. "[Third-party signaling] is the key test for carriers," he said. "It enables the endpoints to talk to each other" – in Sycamore's case, a third-party router that makes the decisions: It could stipulate a light path tomorrow for one hour, for example. "Seven companies are already coding with our specification," he said, while the OIF is waiting for the carriers to sign off a list of requirements. "The OIF document is not a specification, it does not tell you how you do it," Barry insisted.
There's been disappointment with Sycamore's drive to get its specification approved. "People have been saying we are late with it and that its proprietary," Barry said, "I don't know what they mean; it supports TCP/IP, how can it be proprietary?"
Sycamore refused to tell the451 who is coding with its specification, but it plans to have interoperability tests underway soon and a final spec out by the end of the year. Funny: So does the OIF.
"We are supporting OIF as well, so if theirs is approved we'll use that," said Barry. "Either way, we won't let anyone beat us to market with the technology." Now there's fighting talk for you. OIF was unavailable for comment at press time.