Monitoring Division Inc.
The Company: Monitoring Division (mdi) develops products that measure signal degradation in live traffic as it travels over high-speed optical networks. It was founded in 2007 and is NICTA’s fourth spin-out company.
Idea
- As the core of the future Internet becomes more optical, more dynamic and more reconfigurable than current systems, it presents more complicated design and engineering challenges. All components of the network will require revaluation and redesign. In addition, Internet infrastructure will require solutions to measure, explore and secure large scale interconnected networks at the higher protocol layers.
- Traditionally, Internet measurement has been seen as monitoring network health, quality of service, and collecting traffic usage statistics. However, new measurement technologies can be effectively used in dynamic routing, flow control, traffic engineering, and network security, based on end-to-end measurements which do not require access to the network core and which are close to user experience.
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mdi was created to fill critical gaps in network diagnostic tools for carriers migrating from SONET to IP over Optics, and to lay the groundwork for smart optical infrastructure. Their technology uses unique pattern recognition and optical monitoring techniques to fill these gaps, and to build the new field of live network health management.
See also:
Impact
- mdi’s in-service monitoring software is the first to provide real-time insight into fibre networks.
- Customers include: Optus (division of SingTel in Australia) and Optium Corporation (part of Finisar).
More Information
- The NICTA Research Approach
- Validation and Commercial Potential Analysis
- Management and Marketing Support
- Seed Funding
- Spinning Out
- The Managing and Monitoring the Internet (MAMI) Project began in October 2004 and was scheduled to run for three years.
- The unlikely pairing of a pattern recognition researcher, Dr Adam Kowalczyk, and an optical networks and communications researcher, Dr Trevor Anderson, led to the technology breakthrough of NICTA’s fourth spin-out mdi (Monitoring Division Inc.).
- The team was spread across multiple sub-projects. Work progressed on a number of monitors to accurately measure single impairments in optical networks, including Optical Signal to Noise ratio (OSNR), and Polarisation Mode Dispersion (PMD), as well as a more general, multi-impairment monitor.
- There are also activities on characterising the effects of impairments on signal quality, field monitoring of live networks, and transmission techniques to reduce the effects of impairments on data quality.
- By 2006, the team had developed and patented techniques for monitoring both Optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), and for measuring multiple impairments (MIM).
- Work in 2007 was focused on commercialisation of the OSNR monitor, and further development of the MIM, to enhance its feature set
Validation and Commercial Potential Analysis
- With the help of a NICTA market validation grant, in 2006 and 2007, MAMI and NICTA mounted displays at the Optical Fibre Communication Conference and Exposition telecoms trade fair in the US. Significant interest was generated and information gained about prospective customers. The initial size of the potential market was estimated to be more than $UD1 billion.
Management and Marketing Support
- A business development expert was assigned to the team who has since become Chief Executive of the spin-out company, mdi.
- mdi retains an ongoing relationship with NICTA. It has signed a three-year research services agreement. This gives them access to NICTA services and expertise as required.
- NICTA’s commercialisation experts helped the team to develop a business case and construct a financial model for the planned spin-out company.
- NICTA provided funding for market research to ensure the planned company was ready to claim a leadership position in the sector.
- mdi secured $AUD3.85 Million in Series A Funding in February 2008 in its initial round of funding, led by venture capital firm Starfish Ventures and NICTA.
- In October 2008 the company secured $AUD1.75 million in second tranche Series A funding.
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Founded in 2007, mdi has offices in Sunnyvale, California and Melbourne, Australia.
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It has a technology licence agreement with Optium, a leading supplier of high performance optical subsystems.
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In September 2009, mdi announced at the European Conference on Communications (ECOC 2009) it has received orders for the commercial deployment of its eyeD 360 network monitor from Optus, the division of SingTel in Australia.
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