LuxN Launches WavSystem Optical Access for Service Providers - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, Nov 22, 1999

LuxN, a new developer of optical access platforms, Tuesday introduced its modular Central Office-to-Customer site product architecture, called the LuxN WavSystem. The first three products released within the WavSystem are the WavPortal, a customer premises interface device that dramatically lowers the entry price for optical access; the WavFarer, a flexible multi-tenant, multi-port optical access multiplexer; and the WavStation, a central office or point-of-presence optical concentrator optimized for hub-and-spoke applications.

The system is tailored for service providers who want to boost enterprise WANs to Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) speeds, or 155Mbps to 2.5Gbps. LuxN's WavSystem enables service providers to reach the 40,000 multi-site businesses already on or near optical fiber. This powerful and cost-effective system supports GbE VPNs, Fibre Channel, Storage Area Networking and other ultra-high bandwidth applications. It can be deployed for under $10,000 per enterprise terminating unit and from $25,000 per CO-based WavStation. Now in beta test, the WavSystem is slated for general availability during 1Q 2000.

"Businesses and fiber-centric service providers have told us they're ready for this solution," said LuxN CEO and President, Tom Alexander. "We are committed to minimizing all barriers to optical service adoption, which includes: delivering easy-to-install, affordable and remote-manageable systems; helping carriers and end-users locate existing fiber facilities; unburdening carriers from the need and expense to pre-provision SONET subsystems; and dramatically cutting operational networking costs through remote monitoring and management."

"LuxN has a highly skilled design and engineering team and it doesn't surprise me that they've managed to reach below the $10,000 mark for optical CPE," said Andrew Cray, research analyst with Aberdeen Group (a leading IT analyst firm based in Boston, Mass.). "I've seen their beta system in the field. It works, it's highly practical, and it installs easily. Its greatest strength is that it natively supports enterprise applications in a way that would never be cost-justified with SONET."

Market-led product innovation is a hallmark of LuxN. To specify requirements, LuxN's developers and engineers have spent the past year working with copper and fiber-based CLECs, as well as ISPs, Internet Service Exchanges, cable operators, multi-tenant property managers, dark fiber providers and application service providers. In response, WavSystem was developed to correspond closely to the now-familiar DSL service architectures, equipped with CO or POP concentrators to collect and hand off user traffic to high-speed backbones or ISP POPs, as well as, carrier-owned, carrier-managed termination devices to interface with customer premises switches and routers.

To boost WavSystem's performance advantage -- 1000 times above DSL to Gigabit Ethernet speeds and beyond -- and deliver substantial operational improvements, LuxN designed WavSystem to include:

* Single and multi-wavelength WDM link classes, * A broad range of upstream and downstream transport/LAN interfaces for GbE, ATM (OC-3/-12/-48c), Fibre Channel, N x T-1and 10/100 Base-T, * Remote provisioning features, * Redundant architecture, and * End-to-end wavelength management.

Product Detail The Central Office optical concentrator, named the WavStation, supports up to 16 interface modules, is cascadable to a total of 32 channels, and has a total capacity of 80Gbps. WavStation pricing starts at $25,000, which includes the first service module.

Two versions of the customer premises network interface device have been designed: one for single-tenant service termination, called the WavPortal; the other for multi-tenant, multi-port service termination, called the WavFarer. Both devices can either accept optical signals directly from a Gigabit Ethernet switch, or perform the E/O conversion needed to interface with future copper-based Gigabit Ethernet. WavPortal is priced at under $10,000 per device, while WavFarer starts at $15,000.

"To help extend Gigabit Ethernet across metropolitan area networks, Extreme Networks is working closely with LuxN and dark fiber providers to provide the reliable physical layer connectivity that corporate enterprises and service providers have come to expect from high-cost SONET systems," said George Prodan, vice president of worldwide marketing for Extreme Networks. "Working with optical access platform vendors, such as LuxN, provides a valuable service to our customers since it offers another alternative to extend our low-cost, high-performance Layer 3 and 4 switching technology to metropolitan area networks."

The modular WavSystem suite supports a broad range of access architectures, including point-to-point, cascaded multi-drop, access ring and redundant star network configurations.

LuxN has also developed an intelligent service management suite for WavSystem, which includes the following innovative features: