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TECHNOLOGY
- January 2000 by John F. Clark
Facing the Challenges
of Transition
Over the course
of four days, NCF schedules two days that feature four "TecForums"
each day and two days that feature more than 75 sessions covering topics
that run the gamut from public policy and regulation to home gateways
and networks to the economics of E-commerce. Additionally, there is
a veritable boatload of CEOs, presidents, vice-presidents, senior managers
and other executives of the most prominent telecommunications companies
in the world in attendance. Some of the companies represented include
BellSouth, Teradyne, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, GTE, Siemens, IBM,
Lucent, Hewlett Packard and many more. You get the picture – the
sight of so many stock options on the hoof is truly awe-inspiring. Aside from the abundant
free food and drink, the amenities of the Hyatt Regency O'Hare
and some great Chicago blues, my favorite parts of the proceedings are
the TecForums, which were particularly good this year. The TecForums
feature six presenters who offer a daylong, in-depth look at some particular
cutting-edge aspect of the telecommunications industry. I attended one
called "Challenges of the Emerging Optical Network" that was
one of the most beneficial ways to spend a day I have ever experienced. As you may know,
one of the major challenges facing networking industries today is the
transition from the electrical to the optical domain. The fiber optic
medium is now at a level of development that promises almost unimagined
bandwidth. Bottlenecks occur, however, at each point in the network
where electrical devices remain. These are the nodes and switches of
the network – in other words, the points at which physical connections
are made and transmissions receive their routing instructions. The most
significant change on the horizon for optical networks is the development
of optical cross-connects. These devices are inserted at points where
a conversion from light to electrical impulses normally takes place.
Then, instead of the data buffering and reduction in transmission speed
that occurs at these points, the light is simply redirected by a very
tiny multiple array of mirrors under very sophisticated control. The
importance of this development cannot be overstated – it's
tremendous. One of the speakers
I heard that day was also one of the best I have heard at presentations
of this type. Bill St. Arnaud is the Senior Director of Network Projects
for the CANARIE project, which is essentially the Canadian version of
what we now call Internet II. In other words, it is the new high-speed
network for academic use now that commercial interests have taken over
the old one. St. Arnaud is a big proponent of Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit
Ethernet, and had impressive reports on its implementation connecting
institutions of higher learning in Canada. This was particularly gratifying
for me to hear, since I only recently touted the virtues of Gigabit
Ethernet in these pages (Lane Report, August,
1999, p. 42). Another of the more interesting aspects of NCF is the presentation of the InfoVision Awards for superior and innovative products and services. Several of the awards this year were given for products designed to deliver broadband access over the last mile to residential and business customers. In future columns, I'll describe some of these products that will be changing the way we do business.
John F. Clark is a visiting assistant professor of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications
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