Nortel has made a couple of announcements over the last few days that have highlighted some pretty impressive optical technology leadership.

 

 

Late last week, this press release highlighted a 40gig optical win for LG-Nortel with SK Broadband, South Korea's second-largest broadband provider. Using Nortel's 40/100G solution, SK Broadband is upgrading their 10gig network to 40gig.  With the addition of DWDM capabilities, SK Broadband now has 3.52 terabits of bandwidth (40gig x 88 wavelengths) to address their growing IPTV and HD videoconferencing services -- all without having to lay a single new strand of fiber.

 

 

If 40gig isn't fast enough for you, Nortel this week is providing 100gig equipment for the demo network at SC08, the annual international conference for high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis.  Called SCinet, the event bills their show network as "The World's Fastest Network."  Nortel's 100gig equipment will help support the massive bandwidth that SC08's approximately 350 exhibitors require to power their conference activities.  In fact, just one 100G wavelength can provide enough bandwidth to support 10 million 10,000 HD video streams, or more than 100 million YouTube videos being downloaded at the same time.

 

 

Update: Here are a few pictures from SC08.  Click on thumbnails to see full size images.

 

 

 

 

Finally, Nortel has also today announced another optical win with The Romanian Educational Network (RoEduNet).  The new 10gig optical network will connect all Romania's key Research and Educational facilities across more than 4,239 km of optical fiber, providing universities, high schools, cultural, scientific and research non profit institutions with the means to communicate with each other and the world.  The solution is build using Nortel's Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 convergence platform and  Common Photonic Layer line system.  These two platforms provide RoEduNet with two very advanced features -- eROADM and electronic Dynamically Compensating Optics (eDCO). eROADM enables rapid changes to service and traffic patterns by allowing users to dynamically add and drop optical wavelengths without terminating them. eDCO allows wavelengths to be routed through the network independent of distance, fiber dispersion and network topology.  Together, these two technologies enable the routing and re-routing of wavelengths across the network at distances up to 2,000 km.