WILLIAMS TO TEST THE CORVIS ALL-OPTICAL PLATFORM ON LONG HAUL ROUTES
Williams Communications will begin testing an all-optical transmission platform from Corvis Corporation, a start-up based in Columbia, Maryland.  The Corvis system allows the transmission of optical signals up to 3,200 km without electrical regeneration.  The Williams trial initially will 400 carry Gbps of traffic over a single fiber from Houston through Atlanta to northern Virginia.  Commercial deployments in the Williams network could occur as early as the second half of 2000.

The Corvis platform is being designed for fast service provisioning, optical layer protection and the ability to scale seamlessly to 2.4 Tbps without in-field upgrades.  The system will support OC-48 and OC-192(c) IP services, as well as SONET devices and ATM.  Corvis is led by Dr. David Huber, who previously founded Ciena and developed its 16-channel DWDM platform.  Cisco Systems holds a minority interest in Corvis.  Other investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, New Enterprise Associates, Worldview Technology Partners, Kinetic Ventures (formerly Arete Ventures), Technoinvest and the Grosvenor Fund. http://www.corvis.com/news/press/press_20.html
Corvis, November 19, 1999

Earlier this month, Williams awarded a 3-year, $40 million contract to Ciena Corp. to supply intelligent optical core switches, pending successful trial completion.  The Ciena MultiWave CoreDirector switches are to use an Optical Signaling and Routing Protocol (OSRP) to enable dynamic status information exchange for selecting the best path across the network.  Ciena's initial release of CoreDirector is to support 256 OC-48/STM-16 or 64 OC-192/STM-64 interfaces in a single bay.  Optical interfaces include OC-3/STM-1, OC-12/STM-4, OC-48/STM-16 and OC-192/STM-64, accommodating switches and routers without requiring standalone SONET/SDH multiplexers.

In March, Sycamore Networks announced an initial $24.5 million order from Williams Communications for its SN 6000 Intelligent Optical Transport Node platform, which provides wavelength conversion and optical multiplexing of OC-48 lightpaths onto OC-192 trunks.

GTS RAISES 500 MILLION EURO FROM HIGH YIELD BONDS
Global TeleSystems Europe, B.V. (formerly Hermes Europe Railtel) placed a total of 500 million Euro (US$514 million) in Senior Notes due 2006 and 2009.  The company plans to use the funds to purchase additional network assets, including a fiber pair on the FLAG Atlantic-1 trans-Atlantic cable; and to construct City Enterprise Networks and Data/Web-hosting centers across Europe.
http://www.gtsgroup.com
GTS, November 19, 1999

GTS currently has 16,000 route kilometers of fiber in operation across Europe, representing 118,000 active "wavelength" kilometers based on its DWDM network.  GTS is a joint partner in FLAG Atlantic-1, a terabit capacity trans-Atlantic undersea dual-cable system now under development.

CACHEFLOW ROCKETS 427% IN NASDAQ DEBUT
Shares of CacheFlow (Nasdaq: CFLO) rocketed 427% in their first day of public trading to close at 126 3/8 on November 19.  The company offered 5 million shares priced at $24.  CacheFlow offers Internet caching appliances for both the ISP and enterprise markets.  Its product line supports Internet traffic loads ranging from 1.5 Mbps to 155 Mbps.  The CacheFlow appliances locally store and serve the Internet pages most often requested by users, while simultaneously monitoring the source of those pages for content changes. Its Pipeline retrieval algorithms open as many simultaneous TCP connections as the origin server will allow, retrieving objects in parallel.  Another patent-pending Adaptive Refresh algorithm selectively refreshes Web objects based upon their need to be refreshed. This refreshing activity occurs asynchronous to actual user requests. CacheFlow's CacheOS automatically measures and reports on the freshness of content it delivers to end users.

The company began commercial shipments in May-1998.  As of 31-Aug-1999, CacheFlow had approximately 100 customers, Road Runner and germany.net, as well as corporate customers such as Delta Airlines and Xerox.  Approximately 44% of sales were outside of North America.

CacheFlow is led by Brian NeSmith, formerly CEO of Ipsilon Networks, which developed the "IP Switching" concept beginning in 1996.  Ipsilon Networks was acquired by Nokia in December 1997 for US$120 million.  Marc Andreessen recently joined CacheFlow's Board of Directors.
http://www.cacheflow.com/
Converge! News Digest, November 19, 1999

N.E.T. ENHANCES FRAME RELAY SERVICES ON ITS MULTISERVICE PLATFORM
N.E.T. announced advanced traffic management capabilities, Class of Service (CoS) and Quality of Service (QoS) functionality for Frame Relay services provisioned over its Promina 800 series multiservice platform.  Software enhancements for the platform's FrameXpress module allow a higher priority level of access to be assigned to delay-sensitive applications, such as voice and video.  A new fragmentation feature enables service providers to control the maximum size for the packets that are queued into the network on a per PVC basis.  This improves QoS through lower delay variation of high priority, delay sensitive traffic (small frame) when mixed with low priority, non-delay sensitive (large frame) traffic.  The upgraded software is currently shipping.
http://internet.net.com/corporate/releases/pr99/pr4799.html
N.E.T., November 19, 1999

SIEMENS ESTABLISHES OPUSWAVE NETWORKS, TARGETING GSM-BASED PBX VOICE NETS
Siemens Information and Communication Networks established a new subsidiary to develop enterprise voice/data solutions with mobile capabilities.  Opuswave Networks will integrate GSM base stations with existing campus PBX voice and IP-based data networks.  The solutions will be compatible with emerging VoIP offerings, as well as General Packet Radio Services (GPRS), Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) and third-generation GSM enhancements.  Siemens acquired a majority interest in Omnipoint Technologies' Wireless IP Networks Division for $40.5 million in cash. Opuswave will be based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  http://www.opuswave.com
http://www.icn.siemens.com/
Siemens, November 19, 1999

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEVELOPS WEB-SERVER ON A SMARTCARD
The University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI) announced a personal Web server that runs on a Java-based smart card. The device, which is based on a commercial smart card from Schlumberger, has 16 KB of EEPROM and about 1.2 Kbytes of RAM, enough to implement a subset of the TCP/IP stack.  The developers expect a key advantage of running a Web server on a smart card will be security.  http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/sinciti/smartcard/webcard/
http://www.slb.com/smartcards
University of Michigan, November 19, 1999

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: ADVANCED ATM INTEGRATION
A conference entitled "Advanced ATM Integration" will be held December 08-09th at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.  The conference will examine ATM's role at both the network access layer and the network core.  The main topics include IP/ATM, MPLS, carrier-to-carrier broadband services over an optical transport platform, and the deployment of ATM in wireless carrier networks.  Companies presenting at the conference include Ficon Technology, FORE Sytems/Marconi, 2nd Century Communications, Bell Atlantic, Electric Lightwave, Williams, Nortel Networks, Cerent/Cisco Systems, WinStar, IXC/BroadWing, GST Telecom and others.  Registration information is online.  http://www.it-telecomsolutions.com/
(ICM Conferences, Arlene Soumillac, ArleneS@thgus.com)
ATM News Digest, November 22, 1999