 |
|
|
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Brains Behind DIY Networking With Dark Fibre: Len Bosack Of XKL It sounds unbelievable: a do-it-yourself system connected inexpensively over dark fibre and without proprietary protocols requiring specialised knowledge. This is a network engineer’s ideal DWDM – dense wavelength division multiplexing – box. It’s plug and play, (relatively) cheap and does what it says on the box (you don’t have to think about anything). The DXM Optical Transport System is the progeny of XKL (www.xkl.com), in particular the company’s head, Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) co-founder Les Bosack. That’s some pedigree lineage clout. His ‘new’ mission – having left Cisco back in 1990 – is to enable businesses to create high-speed optical networks at a fraction of the cost of carrier-provided services. He indicates the large amount of dark fibre buried in the ground in both the US and London. Few have been able to afford to light it until recently, he says. Normally, optical switching stuff tends to call for a high level of expertise, but Bosack claims his system can be managed by network administrators who are not optical networking specialists. At exhibitions, Bosack can be seen standing under promotional banners saying “DWDM for router nerds” – yet he is adamant the company will take on Cisco, optical specialists and the carriers. This XKL is almost a mystery company. It has been around nearly two decades – at the outset XKL was prevented from competing in the network space through Bosak having to sign a non-competitive agreement on leaving Cisco. Indeed XKL began life by making mainframe computers that were meant to replace Digital Equipment machines. However by 2004, the company realised the optics industry was beginning to produce low-cost high-volume components, after the telecom bubble burst and dot.com episodes. Now Bosak offers a single rack unit for server racks, the DXM transport terminal. The terminals provide Layer 1 WDM connectivity and path protection at bandwidths of up to 100Gbit/s. Each terminal has 10 channels and IT staff can utilise a DXM band combiner to stack up to four pizza boxes for a total of 40 channels. The cost at USD60,000 – 100,000 is up to five times cheaper than existing approaches. Bosak is keen to “remove the fear of fibre from enterprise customers”. The fixed configuration of the 1U box (with integrated optical service channel to hide the cabling) is indeed less expensive than a chassis and card alternative. As well as 1Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s links, Bosak has included support for OC-48 and OC-192 and 1-Gb and 2Gb fibre channel. There is protection switching, capability to switch traffic from one fibre pair to another (in case of service interruption). While dual hot-swappable power supplies are standard, Bosak utilises a mix of AC and DC power. The user interface and system management scheme are equally enterprise friendly. There is a conventional command line interface so all a manager has to do to configure and maintain the system is type in simple commands. Also, instead of calling for a network engineer to wire up an alarm panel, the unit natively supports syslog and SNMP. “You don’t have to have the time and effort needed to configure a Cisco router,” says Bosak. The intention has been that the XKL system will pay for itself: while a managed connection from a carrier has recurring monthly charges, Bosak’s unit offers bandwidth at a per-megabit cost that declines as usage increases. While this may all sound like networking nirvana, there are geographical range limitations. The DXM will cover 80 to 100km without amplification, depending on who you talk to. Bosak’s team point out that with amplifiers spliced in along the fibre route, the length can be up to 400 to 450km. Such a performance lends the unit to metropolitan area networks and campus deployments, but not to networking across long distances. People whisper that the carriers demand fine tuned monitoring capabilities which XKL’s box does not offer. So who is this box aimed at? Companies and organisations who buy metro WDM gear – government agencies, universities and research institutions, financial exchanges and services firms, utilities. Competition stems from the likes of Cisco (of course), Alcatel-Lucent (www.alcatel-lucent.com) and Nortel (www.nortel.com) who push optical switches for enterprise networking, and a German company Adva Optical Networking (www.advaoptical.com), which claims to have sold WDM kit to some 10,000 customers (but has also made losses). Bosak doesn’t talk financials – it is his personal investment which has principally carried the company forward over the years. There is another issue in that XKL does not provide the fibre required to link its systems together. Yes there is fibre stuffed into the ground, but it is accessing the fibres that can require people having to deal with brokers or telcos. There are some businesses and organisations that have rights to dark fibre or even their own in-ground networks. That’s the case with one of XKL’s customers, the University of Washington at Seattle. So, providing fibre access is something XKL has under consideration for the future. Today, Bosak indicates the company can offer contacts to a few fibre brokers, while maintaining that the company hasn’t seen the need for offering fibre access as part of its service. First, the company is setting its market stall out in the UK, New Zealand and the Nordic countries. While it’s generally reckoned the optical fibre networks market is expected to grow 14 per cent per annum over the coming three years, no-one from the leading pack of network manufacturers has yet targeted this part of the enterprise market. Maybe the space XKL has targeted is not considered big enough. A question that needs to be asked is whether the big carriers like Verizon, BT, AT&T are going to change (the answer is obvious). Bosak reckons – indeed believes – the time is ripe for the optics industry to come out of the dark. Change may be on its way. • SEE BROAD-GROUP’s TWO REPORTS : DARK FIBRE EUROPE 2 AND DARK FIBRE CENTRAL, EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE
Have you also seen our other consultant articles? Too Much
Greenwash?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
© BroadGroup 2005-2008. All rights reserved
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
