Ethernet's Impact on Optical Component Testing

Rick King

The optical networking industry is redirecting its focus. Unlike the new-product development feeding frenzy of the 1990s, carriers and service providers now want to leverage their infrastructures and concentrate on cost-effective ways to deliver services profitably to end users -- the commercial and residential customers at the network edge, where bandwidth demand is insatiable because of Internet use and multimedia data-hungry applications.

Redirection will require low-cost technologies, modular plug-and-play components, compatible interfaces and system interoperability on both the manufacturing and test sides to stretch network viability to maximum levels. Equipment manufacturers have conformed accordingly by taking a 25-year-old technology that has low implementation costs, a reputation for solid reliability and a track record for relatively simple installation and maintenance, and developing it to the next level...