There has been an announcement today going around the Telecom press concerning a $32Million investment into a (not so)new OBS company out of Ireland called InTune Networks. All I can say is:
“It’s about time”
For a couple of years Matisse Networks has been producing a Metro Ethernet solution based on Optical Burst Switching (OBS) technology and has had some success in North American and Asian markets. Unfortunately when a new company comes out with a new technology there are two axis of risk involved with choosing them for a Carrier’s communications infrastructure. With this announcement OBS gets s shot in the arm and the risk of investing in a new technology is mitigated.
The central idea surrounding OBS technology is to tightly couple the Ethernet Layer with the Lambda resources it needs to provide service. Think of a switch that, based upon incoming traffic from a customer, “commandeers” lambda resources to transmit that specific burst of traffic and then lets the lambda go when it’s finished transmitting. More technical descriptions can be found here and here.
If (when) OBS becomes more mainstream, which I think it will with this new investment, there will be a significant shift in how Metro Networks are planned, engineered and deployed.
I will be posting more on OBS in the near future, so come back and check again.
