May 21, 2002--NEC Corp. (www.nec.com) and Tellium (www.tellium.com) have jointly developed what they call the industry's first commercially available multi-vendor integrated transport-switch designed to simplify optical wavelength networks by eliminating redundant electronic components.
The integrated system is designed to enable carriers to decrease capital and operating expenses, power consumption, and floor space compared with traditional multiple-vendor equipment.
The system combines Tellium's Aurora product platforms of optical switches and the StarNet Wavelength Management System (WMS) with NEC's SpectralWave DWDM systems and SpectralWave Network Management System (NMS). The system integrates a transceiver from Tellium with a DWDM transponder from NEC, creating an ITU-compliant DWDM optical wavelength transport-switch.
The new transport-switch to six bays instead of the 12 bays of equipment common to alternative offerings, say the companies.
The combined offering comes a year after the two companies announced a joint marketing and development agreement. The integration is performed via a standard TMF 513/814 northbound interface from the Tellium WMS to the NEC SpectralWave NMS.
"The Tellium and NEC system is the industry's first available multi-vendor integrated optical transport and switching system," said Dana Cooperson, director of optical networking at RHK, Inc. "Carriers need to save on capital and operating expenses and are challenging vendors for creative solutions. Tellium and NEC are leading the multi-vendor effort to cut costs through network element integration."
General availability for the multi-vendor transport-switch is expected in the third quarter of 2002.