Cogent Picks Up Fiber City
Optical Internet service provider continues aggressive acquisition program by adding New York metropolitan area business-focused ISP. (more)

P-Com, Telaxis to Merge
The Campbell, Calif., provider of wireless telecom products and South Deerfield, Mass., developer of wireless fiber-optic connectivity components, will join forces. (more)

Venture Capital News

CoreOptics Raises $21.5M
CoreOptics, a Princeton, N.J. and German-based provider of "advanced transporter technology" for metro and long-haul telecommunications equipment, said it has secured $21.5 million in new venture-capital funding. Participants in the Series B round included Cresendo Ventures, Techno Venture Management, Atila Ventures/ETV, High Tech Private Equity and others. The company's Series A of funding totaled $15 million.

The company said it will use the new funds to scale up manufacturing and for onging advanced product development. One particular focus area for CoreOptics will be additional enhancements to its sales and customer-support group.

CoreOptics claims to be the "leading provider" of advanced 10G and 40G transponder subsystems.

Product News

Allied Telesyn Rolls Out Switches
Allied Telesyn Inc. announced the availability of its AT-9800 series of fixed chassis Layer 3/4+ Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet switches. Delivering high performance in a small form factor, AT-9800 switches are ideal aggregation points for the education, enterprise or metro area network, officials said.

Offered in two fixed, yet flexible, configurations, the AT-9800 switches were built to meet the needs of high performance network services. The AT-9812T features 12 fixed 1000BaseT ports and 4 1000BaseX GBIC bays; the AT-9816GB includes 16 1000BaseX GBIC bays. Both switches are well-suited for enterprise mid-tier aggregation, multiple tenant unit aggregation, metro area or campus networks and server farms.

Designed to outclass products from established vendors in the high-end technology space, Allied Telesyn's AT-9800 switches are extremely powerful devices priced affordably to drive market adoption. The AT-9812T successfully completed the Tolly Group's recent 2002 LAN Switch Interoperability Test, independently validating its technical credentials.

Designed to deliver uncompromising performance, the AT-9800 switches combine hardware-based wirespeed switching and IP/IPX routing with advanced policy-based Quality of Service, wide-ranging multicast support and a comprehensive set of configuration and control features.

Luminent Announces CWDM Solution Set
Luminent, a supplier of long wavelength transceivers, announced the availability of a complete Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) solution set for metro and enterprise networks. This set includes a newly introduced pluggable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer (OADM), Small Form factor Pluggable (SFP), Gigabit Interface converter (GBIC), and Small Form Factor (SFF) CWDM transceivers in all 16 CWDM wavelengths, and a full line of optical filters for multiplexing/demultiplexing (MUX/DMUX) needs.

Luminent also introduced a complete family of digital diagnostic Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) transceivers. These Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) compliant transceivers allow customers maximal flexibility in choosing appropriate physical layer optics for varying applications. The digital diagnostic functionality allows for real time calibrated measurement of key parameters such as optical receive and transmit power, as well as supply voltage, bias current, and module temperature. Luminent's SFP product line is fully compliant with Bellcore GR-468-CORE standards. Data will be available to customers concerning mechanical vibration, mechanical shock, temperature cycling, and accelerated aging. Long reach SFP transceivers are calibrated and tested at five temperatures; data at three temperatures will be shipped with every unit.

Other News

CIR to Optical Networking Vendors: Wake Up!!!
A new report from industry-analyst firm CIR declares that optical-networking vendors by and large have yet to live up to the promises they make to their customers when it comes to network management. CIR asserts that it is quite an indictment that, over the last 25 years or so, a typical operations director found within a service provider has yet to see any software application perform as marketed.

CIR recently completed a 6-month examination of the network-management- systems market and, as part of the process, interviewed all of the major U.S.- based ILEC, IXC and CLEC companies. The results from the carrier discussions point to the fact that, despite the equipment vendors' complaints about terrible market conditions for optical transport and switching products, CIR has found that many of these companies seem oblivious to the crucial management requirements that can truly differentiate a manufacturer from its competitors in the eyes of carrier customers. Furthermore, it appears that certain vendors named in the report are risking the rewards of longer-term relationships by demanding higher prices in the short term.

CIR's report provides an "excruciating" level of detail on the perspectives of U.S. carriers regarding their future functionality requirements, including performance monitoring, server sizing, constraints related to back-office modifications, the actual need for an optical control plane, and reliance on standards. The report goes on to note how and where suppliers can increase their opportunities to generate sales and customer satisfaction. Lastly, the report addresses where senior management within manufacturer and software companies need to focus their attention in order to increase market share and improve their performance in the eyes of their carrier customers.

JDSU Intros New 10 Gb/S Electro-Optic Testing Products
JDS Uniphase announced three new electro-optic test instruments that offer an economical solution for stressed eye testing as specified in IEEE 10 Gigabit Ethernet Standard 802.3ae. The measurement comprises controlling the extinction ratio (ER), the electrical bandwidth for ISI, AM interference, and timing jitter for receiver conformance testing.

This low cost test solution for the new standard integrates includes the following new JDS Uniphase Instrumentation products:

• The OPTX10A Stressed Eye Generator is a versatile 1310 nm or 1550 nm reference transmitter supporting data rates of 10.71 Gb/s to 155 Mb/s. The OPTX10A features an adjustable extinction ratio from 10 dB to 3 dB, selectable electrical signal paths (internal pass through and standard 4-poll Bessel Thomson, and external filter), and sinusoidal amplitude interference input.
• The OPG10A Optical Pattern Generator and OED10A Optical Error Detector are optical bit error rate testers (BERTs) that feature excellent sensitivity and overload performance. The OPG10A includes an option for input frequency offset supporting sinusoidal timing jitter generation and serial electrical output.

The Optical Pattern Generator and Optical Error Detector are also ideal for Physical Layer component/module manufacturing test needs. The units support the key 10 Gb/s data rates: SONET/SDH standard; FEC 9.96 Gb/s, 10.66 Gb/s and 10.71 Gb/s; 10 Gigabit Ethernet 10.3125 Gb/s; Fiber Channel 10.5 Gb/s and provide five selectable patterns with error insertion control. The Optical Pattern Generator includes an internal clock source and clock/16 and pattern trigger outputs, while the Optical Error Detector includes clock recovery and clock/16 output.