These products use photo-detector technology from Picometrix. Instead of the timeslots and provisioned connections used in TDM structures, DPT employs statistical multiplexing to maximize the ring's carrying capacity. Multicasting and address filtering are also supported. First products will be available next month. Cisco said it is committed to open standards for SRP and the packet transport technology.
White papers are online.
The experimental switch is a tiny, pivoting bar with a gold-plated mirror on one end that can alternately allow lightwave signals to travel from one fiber to the next or reflect the signal instead. The evaluation also demonstrated the M40's ability to meet the stringent jitter measurements required by the Bellcore GR 253standard. Alcatel's prototype 40 Gbps system, which is currently in lab trial, incorporates several advances in dispersion tolerance and spectral efficiency. The system was recently recognized by the European Commission one of the leading photonics research projects. The tests covered a fiber distance of 80 km.