AT&T Deploys New Optical Network

AT&T Corp. announced on Monday that is has deployed a new optical network that is capable of righting itself quickly in response to failure or disaster, and will allow quicker provisioning of high-speed circuits for enterprise customers with direct access to the network.

The new network is already carrying private-line, Internet, voice, data, and video traffic in more than 40 cities nationwide, AT&T officials said.

In the event of fiber cuts or other failures, newly deployed intelligent “CoreDirector” optical switches from Ciena Corp. will use software-based route maps and routing algorithms to quickly reestablish connections without human intervention. The switches are already deployed in about 40 cities nationwide, officials said.

The new technologies will also allow AT&T staff to rapidly provision services from one end of the network to the other, after access to the network has been established. The provisioning will be facilitated by Cisco Systems, Inc.s ONS 15454 SONET Multiservice Platform. More than 100 of these devices are already deployed on enterprise customer premises or on sections of AT&Ts metropolitan and long-distance networks.

AT&T said additional deployments of these Ciena and Cisco products are forthcoming.

“This is not merely a vision statement nor a field trial, but rather a nationwide deployment of new technology that will significantly improve the capabilities we provide our business customers,” said Dan Sheinbein, vice president, AT&T Labs network architecture and development, in a prepared statement. “The AT&T intelligent optical network will enable automatic provisioning and restoration of wavelengths and private-line services, often referred to as bandwidth-on-demand or point-and-click provisioning.”