SCOPE OF THE REPORT
There is an active industry debate surrounding OEO (Optical Electronic Optical) vs. OOO (all-optical) switching in the core networks. Current architectures of SONET rings or passive DWDM systems with SONET add / drop multiplex devices (ADMs) are not scalable and efficient for provisioning new services. The technical challenge carriers face today is how to establish wavelength paths across an interconnected series of inter-office, regional and national rings. Currently, carriers must set-up wavelengths at the boundaries of each ring through a series of expensive, large and difficult to manage electrical ADMs. With carriers now looking to deploy DWDM systems with 100 - 160 wavelengths or more, establishing wavelength paths across the boundaries between these rings becomes more challenging and expensive.

Dittberner expects to see a shift in carrier spending away from transport systems (ADMs) to optical switching devices. Carriers need low-cost aggregation and transport systems that can deliver wavelengths to the customer in a similar manner like STS-1 (DS-3) is offered today. The upcoming Dittberner PERSPECTIVE "Optical Switching and Its Impact on Public Networks" report provides an in-depth analysis and overview of all optical systems offered on the market today and in the next 9 months. It provides an evaluation and forecast of new optical switching technologies and architectures delivering converged optical transport and bandwidth management for TDM and data services. The report also covers new network models that address operational issues by combining functions that exist in separate legacy systems into a single box, thus eliminating the need for physical interconnection.

Dittberner believes that a big growth area for Network Operators will be managed wavelength services that carry traffic like Gigabit Ethernet and 10Gigabit Ethernet. This will be the next step in managed private line services. Dittberner also expects that metro networks will continue to rely on rings for the near future, but that this will change over time to mesh networks. Carriers are increasingly requiring that all transport equipment have an evolutionary path to mesh topologies. A new trend currently pushed by the vendors is to use a mesh network topology with optical switching systems as an alternative to traditional linear or ring architectures. The report provides an in depth analysis of the economics of an all-optical mesh network vs. traditional optical ring architecture. It also examines the capital and operational cost associated with deploying a mesh vs. ring optical network architecture taking into consideration the revenue impact. This report provides some 20 case studies of operator deployment plans for optical switching and installed base data.