The National Transparent Optical Network (NTON): moving key WDM technologies off the lab bench into public and private networks

The National Transparent Optical Network Consortium (NTONC) and the Defense Advanced Projects Research agency (DARPA) are jointly funding a full scale wavelength-routed regional optical demonstration network featuring live traffic to investigate strategies for commercial deployment. The NTONC comprises world leaders in many areas of optical data transmission technology. They are Pacific Bell, Sprint, Northern Telecom, Uniphase Telecommunications Photonics, Hughes Aircraft, Rockwell International, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), University of California at San Diego and Columbia University. Northern Telecom is leading the overall effort and in particular the development of new optical technology. LLNL is leading the network integration, deployment of demonstration applications and operation of the prototype network and testbed.