"Jeff E. Nelson" <jnelson@gauche.zko.dec.com> (04/26/91)
Reproduced with permission from an electronic newspaper, VNS, that
circulates within Digital.
Jeff E. Nelson Digital Equipment Corporation
jnelson@tle.enet.dec.com Affiliation given for identification purposes only
<><><><><><><><> T h e V O G O N N e w s S e r v i c e <><><><><><><><>
Edition : 2310 Friday 26-Apr-1991 Circulation : 8501
AT&T DISCO
Distributed Switching with Centralized Optics (DiSCO) is the prototype
of a lightning fast switching system that conveys calls with pulses of
light instead of electricity. DiSCO switches, says AT&T, will break
the bottleneck that exists when light waves traveling over optical
fibers have to be converted into slower moving electrons to go through
today's electronic switches. Last May AT&T announced a prototype DiSCO
switch that could take eight incoming fibers, each carrying thousands
of calls, and patch them through to any one of eight outgoing fibers.
Now it has quietly surpassed that with a 16x16 array, and the company
says more advances are in the works. The DiSCO comes in a brass
package the size of a candy bar and could fit into a conventional AT&T
switch, transforming it into a workhorse for big jobs such as high
quality videoconferencing. The first photonic switches, using DiSCO or
another design, should hit the market by 1995, says AT&T. {Business
Week April 8, 1991}