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Optical Networking and Switching Vendors 155

The Growing Demand

It was clear as the new millennium began that a remarkable revolu-
tion in information services was overtaking our society. Communi-
cation, which was confined to narrowband voice signals, demanded a
higher-quality visual, audio, and data content. Every aspect of inter-
action (whether business-to-business, entertainment and social
demands, government, or academia) increasingly relies on rapid and
reliable communications networks. The Internet alone thrust mil-
lions of individual users into a new world of information and tech-
nology. The telecommunications industry struggled to keep up with
these demands.All predictions that current fiber capacities would be
adequate for our needs into the new century have proven wrong.
What was once a voice network growing at 4 percent per year is now
a data-centric network growing at 30 percent (and more) per year.To
meet the demands, the carriers sought help from the manufacturers
and the standards committees. They were faced with obsolescence of
their entire network infrastructure or a meltdown of the network.
The committees went to work looking for a new way to handle this
phenomenal growth and unrelenting demand.

Caution: Standards Committees at
Work

The standards bodies were aggressively specifying and enhancing
the various techniques, standards documents, and the implementa-
tions of the SONET and SDH architectures.These same bodies influ-
ence all the other networking standards, yet different committees
are involved. The committees include representation from the list in
Table 7-1.
Ciena and Cambrian were the first to include DWDM in metro-
politan networks. These DWDM ring systems can be connected with
ATM switches and IP routers. ATM networks will use SONET/SDH
physical layer interfaces at 622 Mbps using add-drop multiplexers.