Bell Labs and NTT Photonics Labs Team on Optical-Packet Research

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs research organization and NTT's Photonics Labs have entered into a collaborative agreement focusing on optical packet switching technologies. The researchers believe demand for innovations in packet transport networks is driven by several factors including: the emergence of very-high bandwidth subscribers, notably with FTTx deployments on a large scale; new reduced power consumption and footprint specifications; and low latency applications such as storage area network (SAN) or grid computing. Through this agreement Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and NTT Photonics will cooperate in investigations on optical packet switching technology, including transport multi-protocol label switching (T-MPLS), the initial version of MPLS Transport. Specific terms and conditions of the agreement were not disclosed.http://www.alcatel-lucent.comhttp://www.ntt.co.jp