Storage over SONET

Nortel's Storage over SONET solution allows organizations to overcome the distance limitations of native storage protocols - the main impediment to interconnecting widely separated storage networks while meeting the performance needs of critical data center applications. These solutions enable transport of native FICON, Fibre Channel, and Gigabit Ethernet over Metro Area and Wide Area network (MAN and WAN) distances and provide a highly reliable, predictable and resilient network solution for distance-extended storage applications.

The solutions utilize four innovative technologies: compression, credit-based flow control, Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) and virtual concatenation (VCAT) to optimize the optical SONET network for storage applications. In particular, Fiber Channel compression allows users to realize tangible operational and economic benefits as compression efficiencies can range from 2:1 to over 20:1, dependent on the application.  Operational tools such as real time and historic reporting of compression ratios and network utilizations will assist users in determining the exact size of network bandwidth required for their particular applications.

With the growing need for distance extension to address business continuity and protect against data loss, a Storage over SONET solution from Nortel delivers cost-effective, high performance storage connectivity to the enterprise while simultaneously offering a new and profitable revenue source to the service provider.