NGN Ventures: New Directions in Metro Networks

Back in the hyperinflated days of 2000, Bijan Khosravi, CEO of Movaz Networks, had a vision of building a platform for a unified optical infrastructure for transport, switching and routing. In those days, he left the overly competitive Silicon Valley and took the start-up spirit to Atlanta to found Movaz Networks. The Movaz mission is to deliver any service over wavelengths at STS-1 cost points. Over the years, Movaz has weathered the telecom storm and evolved a sales strategy that focuses first on the economics of the network, then on the technology. Khosravi said Movaz currently has 17 customers and enough incoming revenue to consider itself "no longer a start-up" but a private company.


The metro has taken center stage for optical growth and investment, said Surya Panditi, CEO of Polaris Networks, with DS-1/DS-3 based services (voice, private line, leased line) still being the cash cow. Traditional switching architectures have inherent scalability and complexing issues. New MSPP solutions deployed at the edge of the network address some of the issues but also face scalability and cost problems because of inter-machine trunking requirements. Polaris is focused on a hybrid switching platform that handles both broadband and narrowband crossconnect and grooming. The Polaris optical core switch provides switching and grooming of any circuit to any other circuit, from DS-1/VT1.5 , STS-1 to STS-Nc granularities. Polaris was founded in June 2000 and has raised $77 million so far.


Cost and scalability are the key requirements in the metro access space, said John Webley, CEO of Turin Networks. The key to the metro access game is to deliver lots and lots of T1s and T3s at very aggressive costs. Webley said the pitfall service providers must avoid is building a parallel or overlay Ethernet infrastructure in addition to their existing SONET base. Turin advocates an integrated EoS metro architecture. Its boxbox provides Ethernet over SONET/SDH, integrating the functions of a next-generation SONET add-drop multiplexer (ADM) and digital cross-connect system (DCS) with an Ethernet aggregation switch. Turin also ties this functionality into the metro transport network. Enabling technologies and protocols include virtual concatenation (ITU G.707), LCAS (ITU G.7042) and Generic Framing Protocol (GFP, ITU G.7041). Turin is currently in revenue shipments. Motorola has signed an OEM agreement for the Turin platform.


The rapid growth of large circuits is the real pain point for telco central offices said Chris Rust, CEO of Mahi Networks. Each new OC-48 trunk requires substantial amounts in central office "plumbing," such as coaxial cabling, patch panels, plenums, risers, power, cooling and exhaust systems, in addition to DS3 cards of the SONET ADMs/MSPPs. Rust argues that replacing the DS-3 plumbing with an automated optical node interconnection system represents the most important area for optimizing central office architecture. Mahi has developed a metro core aggregation system that integrates SONET add-drop multiplexer (ADM), 3/3 digital cross-connect (DCS), DS-3 breakout capability and Layer 2 Ethernet transport switching in a single box. The system also features a GMPLS control plane for automating resource discovery and allocation.
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