What will the Internet look like in the not-so-distant future? Current trends point to a billion Internet users, and a billion more telephone users, by 2004! The demand for data bandwidth this will generate could grow by a factor of 100 or 200 in the next four years alone. Engineers at Nortel Networks are working hard to make sure the Internet can keep up with this increasing demand.

To make this possible, the Internet of the future will be running increasingly on fiber optics - strands of glass or plastic as thin as a human hair that transmit information using photons, the components of light. The clarity of the fiber and the very reflective layer of glass surrounding the fiber keep the light moving and allow almost none of this signal to escape. As a result, fiber optic technology allows large amounts of data to travel great distances reliably and at great speeds.

Handling all of this data and sending it to the right place is the job of optical networking equipment. Most of the world's long-distance Internet and telephone traffic is carried over products designed, tested and built by engineers at Nortel Networks. The Ottawa-based Microelectronics Group of Nortel Networks designs and engineers key parts for these products. Of the 1,200 people who work in the Microelectronics Group, about 20% are engineers, most in the electrical and mechanical fields.

Optical Networking Integrated Circuits are one of the most important component parts of an optical networking system. These tiny circuits (or chips) work together to convert photons (from the fibre optic system) into electrons (used by your local computer network).

The process of designing and building these circuits is demanding and very precise. Once a customer's needs have been identified, detailed product design begins, with electrical engineers and semiconductor designers creating the product on paper. This involves mapping out the thousands of different components that will fit into a single integrated circuit — which may be as small as 0.5 cm on each side. Using computer aided design tools, the design can be tested and refined before the first prototype is built.

Once prototypes are tested successfully, mechanical engineers determine how the product can be put into volume production (sometimes in the millions of units). This work includes assessing the capability of the integrated circuits factory, training operators (those who actually build the chips), and identifying opportunities to lower cost. Once volume manufacturing begins, engineers continually tweak the production process to make sure that the products are built to the highest quality standard.

The result of all this effort? A set of the integrated circuits in a Nortel Networks OC-192 optical network can move data at up to 10 billion bits per second. This is a lot of data being moved around — enough to support 160,000 people surfing the Internet on modems, or 160,000 people talking on the telephone at once.

Nortel Networks is Canada's leading high technology company, and offers a world of career opportunities in engineering. The company accounts for around 25% of all industrial research and development in Canada. Each year, it recruits about a quarter of the country's graduate engineers and computer scientists. Nortel Networks' commitment to fiber optic technology began more than a decade ago and continues to enable the high-speed solutions required for tomorrow's high-bandwidth, high-availability networks.

Want to learn more about fiber optic technology? Visit the Nortel Networks website at www.nortelnetworks.com