@fibresystemsmag | www.fibre-systems.com


FEATURE OPTICAL SYSTEMS


data rates to the blisteringly fast terabit speeds of the future. Colourless, directionless, contentionless and


flexgrid (CDC-F) wavelength routing was recently developed by the optical industry as a way of cost-effectively routing high-capacity wavelengths throughout an optical network. According to Nokia’s Hollasch, his company’s


combination of touchless CDC-F wavelength routing with programmable coherent interfaces and converged packet-optical switching promises to deliver the speeds and latency that IoT will ultimately demand from networks. But as he noted: ‘Te truth is, these technologies are still in their infancy in terms of product capability and adoption by network operators.’ ‘We continue to invest heavily in programmable


optical technologies, particularly coherent digital signal processors, such as the Photonic Service Engine 2, as well as reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers that bring CDC-F wavelength routing into the mainstream of core and metro deployments,’ he added. Meanwhile for Infinera, a company that has focused on optical transport since its inception, the


IoT will affect how the access and aggregation networks combine and distribute large volumes of data


IoT is transforming the entire network infrastructure as bandwidth requirements across transport networks continue to grow exponentially. As Pravin Mahajan, director of product marketing at Infinera, points out, optical super-channels are already delivering massive multi-terabit scale on transport networks. As IoT takes off, the traditional approach in


scaling bandwidth using discrete optics-based systems would consume a tremendous amount of power and space resulting in greater operational complexity and inefficiencies. But, according to Mahajan, large-scale photonic integration will make multi-terabit super-channel WDM technology practical by integrating hundreds of discrete optical functions into compact, low-power subsystems. ‘Tis massive, multi-terabit scale capacity,


combined with fine-grained 100G granularity using “sliceable photonics”, can significantly reduce the number of line modules used in a network,’ he


said. ‘Each slice in this massive pool of super- channel capacity can be tuned, modulated and routed in separate directions on-demand, individually, in increments of 100G, via simple soſtware defined activation.’ Tese technologies can dramatically reduce


operational rigidity and forecasting complexity by allowing operators to scale their network capacity as required to match the expanding growth in bandwidth needs driven by IoT. Infinera’s emphasis on automated provisioning


highlights another important trend in the industry, as service providers increasingly turn to soſtware- defined networks (SDN) and programmability to fulfil the rapid and low-latency network response demanded by IoT applications. ‘Even more important than raw optical


transport, we are supporting the IoT through network function virtualisation platforms,’ said ECI’s Homa. ‘Tis is the only practical way to deal with IoT response time, latency, and security requirements.’ Importantly, network function virtualisation


(NFV) provides a new way to build complex IT applications, decoupling network functions from proprietary hardware appliances and running these in soſtware. As the levels of connectivity associated with the IoT drive soſtware-defined network (SDN) architectures, operators will be able to implement NFV, cutting network and equipment costs, while scaling up services to meet IoT demands. Given this, myriad optics vendors are building


up SDN- and NFV-related products for operators. ADVA recently bought US-based network equipment manufacturer, Overture Networks. In Rettenberger’s words: ‘Te acquisition has given as an architecture that is NFV centric, allowing us to deliver virtualised network functions, which are very flexible.’ For its part, ECI has developed the Mercury


network function virtualisation platform, which according to Homa, is built on a hyper-converged computing model to combine, for example, caching and security functions to support IoT applications. ‘A huge advantage of our approach is that we can


apply policies at the point of origin, such as prioritising latency-dependent IoT traffic over regular centralised cloud traffic,’ he said. ‘And these platforms can be deployed as standalone modules or as blades... to marry transport and IoT applications.’ Optical transport vendor Coriant has also


developed its ‘Transcend’ package to provide soſtware-defined networking and NFV capabilities for network scaling. Chief technology officer Uwe Fischer is certain these functions are going to be critical for the networks of tomorrow. ‘Networks are going to become programmable as


Issue 12 • Summer 2016 FIBRE SYSTEMS 19


well as service- and application-aware, and much more intelligent,’ he said. ‘And [eventually] the wide area network will have a soſtware-defined, network-controlled architecture and will seamlessly integrate with data centres.’ Indeed, as he points out, the changes that


industry is now seeing in its networks have, to a certain extent, already taken place in data centres, where the need for extreme connectivity has driven radical changes in data centre architecture. ‘We’re seeing a real revolution with how data


centres are architected,’ he said. ‘Before we had storage and compute interconnected with the router network inside the data centre, but this is now transformed into [soſtware-defined] packet- forwarding planes, which is the foundation for seamless connectivity of the network.’ ‘Te programmable network will become a


seamless extension of the data centre, instead of just a dump network that simply interconnects with the data centre,’ he added.


Brave new data centres Data centres are going to be crucial to enabling IoT, and consequently, data centre interconnect (DCI) network connectivity must be ready to distribute the impending terabits of data from IoT with ease. ‘Advances in coherent optics have already paved


the way to transmiting data (successfully) at rates of 100G and much higher over almost any distance, dramatically improving the DCI performance that will underpin IoT,’ said Ciena’s Loudon Blair. But as he points out: ‘Robust connectivity is vital


for processing the enormous amounts of data collected from a variety of sensors, as well as the compute capabilities required for big data analytics.’ With this in mind, optics vendors worldwide are


busy developing high-capacity DCI platforms, so that data centre operators can rapidly and


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32