Austin Chooses Lynx Photonic Networks' Bypass Switching System For Network Resilience

Las Vegas – Lynx Photonic Networks, a supplier of network availability solutions, announced at the Interop exhibition in Las Vegas that its LightLEADER bypass switching system has been selected by the City of Austin, Texas, which is deploying the system to protect its fiber optic network.

"Optical networks are deployed in a variety of topologies, and protecting them is a critical part of an organization's – or a city's – disaster recovery program," said Abe Queller, Lynx's vice president, customer applications & support. "While some protocols and topologies, such as SONET rings, offer protection from single-point failures, other topologies, such as linear networks, don't offer any protection at all. What we have seen in the past is the collapse of an entire network due to power outages at one or more nodes."

Such outages are common during rainy weather, and Lynx' LightLEADER optical bypass system – successfully deployed in both commercial and military environments – is specifically designed to recover from such events, keeping the network up and running. Failed nodes are bypassed, and the connectivity is maintained among the rest of the nodes, thus improving overall network resilience.

"Because we're now deploying the Lynx bypass system, we expect to see a definite reduction of total network failures due to power outage," said Malcolm Yeatts of the City of Austin's Communication Technology Management group. "The Lynx system will be a key element in helping ensure the survivability of our network."

SOURCE: Lynx Photonic Networks