Red Sky Systems Inc. announced the successful completion of a major demonstration of interoperability between its regional undersea optical transport platform and Marconi's OMS3200 series of optical core switches.
The two companies demonstrated that their technologies could be integrated to break through the barriers of proprietary undersea network connectivity solutions while maintaining carrier-class performance. This unprecedented technical achievement highlights Red Sky's leadership in driving the convergence of terrestrial and undersea technologies to significantly lower network acquisition, operating, and maintenance costs for new undersea network build-outs.
For the interoperability demonstration, Red Sky interconnected unmodified terrestrial-based Marconi OMS3240 and OMS3250 multi-service switches with Red Sky's Optical Line Interfaces. The interconnected equipment was then used to transport multiple 10Gbps channels directly over a 1000km bi-directional amplified optical transmission line featuring Red Sky's ultra-compact undersea optical amplifiers. The demonstration included network capabilities such as automatic service and protection path switching through the Marconi optical core switch, as well as the ability to display Red Sky alarm status on the Marconi craft interface terminal.
The demonstration showed that new service provisioning, sparing, and capacity upgrade implementations can be vastly simplified by using fewer back-to-back interconnects and by reducing the complexity of the network management system. In addition, the demonstration illustrated how the alarm reporting and management interface functions of the Red Sky Optical Line Interfaces simplify connectivity between the undersea and terrestrial portions of an operator's network and provide a common multi-service network protection solution.
The demonstration's results mean that operators can now consider Marconi's Optical Multiservice Core Switches for use in their undersea networks by simply adding Red Sky's Optical Line Interface. The Red Sky Optical Line Interface provides both a DWDM interface with signal conditioning and a management interface that collapses an amplified undersea fiber-optic line into a single network element and simplifies end-to-end network management.