BALTIMORE, July 11 -- The 17th annual National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference, hosted by Telcordia Technologies opened its doors to an expected 15,000 industry professionals -- nearly double the 9600 attendees at last year's conference in Denver. This year's conference began on Sunday afternoon with a technical workshop. A plenary session was held and six parallel tracks of technical sessions will run from Tuesday through Thursday. The technical session will feature more than 175 papers on the latest fiber optic technologies At the technical exhibit more than 350 companies are displaying the latest in fiber optic technology. Some of the technologies featured at the exhibit include: The industry's first in-service, intelligent optical core switch by Tellium. The new switch delivers high-speed, high-capacity optical solutions that empower carriers around the world to create, run, control and optimize their networks. Somera Communications launched the Strategic Telecom Asset Recovery (STAR) Program. The Somera STAR Program is designed to provide telecommunications carriers, ISPs, manufacturers and financial institutions with solutions to manage the sudden overabundance of excess network infrastructure equipment on the market today. Alliance Fiber Optic Products Inc. announced the release of its SpectraMux line of 4- and 8-channel coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) modules for cost-effective multichannel access network applications. AFOP's SpectraMux line of CWDM modules allows for extended temperature performance; other features include high adjacent band isolation, high center wavelength accuracy and stability, low insertion loss, high directivity, an epoxy-free optical path, and low polarization dependent loss.