OFC Daily Wrap - Wednesday

Marcus Weldon, Nokia Bell Labs, USA

We are in an era with new demands on network performance, as myriad devices and machine systems are connected to intelligent control functions in the cloud to achieve higher degrees of automation and productivity. The demands will be for ultralow latency and ultrahigh capacity, ‘perfect’ reliability and infinite adaptability, requiring an unprecedented degree of dynamism in the setup and control of network paths. In his plenary presentation, Weldon detailed how novel optical and packet-optical networking techniques and technologies will be critical to creating a flexible, deterministic dynamic network.

Chengliang Zhang, China Telecom Beijing Research Institute, China

Chinese network operators are working to keep up with China's network buildout and predict future demands. Chengliang Zhang’s plenary presentation detailed the optical network evolution in China and China Telecom’s role in this expansion. With the intensification of cloud-based services and 5G wireless developments, he explained how optical transport network (OTN) need to be transformed to better address future demands such as higher capacity, lower latency, and service-specific network slicing. Zhang provided a vision of how the ‘Internet of Everything” is impacting the optical networking industry.

John C. Doyle, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA

Our world is full of complex networks — from high performance computing, to sustainable farming techniques, to advanced manufacturing and SDN-enabled communications networks. John Doyle’s research looks at these complex networks and the natural evolution of their architecture buildouts. In his plenary presentation, Doyle explained his how an integrated approach can be used to standardize and streamline even the most complicated optical network.

Wednesday Program Highlights

Network Operator Summit

10:30 - 15:00, Expo Theater I

For professionals in the supply chain, from equipment manufacturers to components, the summit offers an inside perspective from service providers and network operators. Not to be missed panel discussions entitled “The Role of ‘Open Transport’ in the New Metro and Inter-Data-Center Architectures” and “On the Road to 100G PON (beyond 10G PON).” Keynote by: Najam Ahmad, Vice-President, Network Engineering, Facebook; and speakers from Infinera and Ovum.

Market Watch

Panel IV: High Capacity, Long Distance Transport: Innovation vs. Reality

15:30 - 17:00, Expo Theater I

Day two of presents a panel discussion on the view, current progress and future plan for the application of new transmission and switching technologies at long distance optical transport network. Panelists come from NEC, TE SubCom, Ciena and others.

Connected OFCITY Challenge 2018: Lighting Up the Emerging World

14:00 - 16:00, Room 6C

Alibaba and Google team members collaborate to develop communications infrastructure and services to address the pressing needs for two cities in a fast developing area in East Africa — based on requirements defined by South African National Research Network (SANReN), Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) and CSquared. This scenario provides insight into the major issues faced by the communications industry in the region, which include network reliability, environmental restrictions and regulatory issues.

Dispatches from the OFC Blog

Emerging 5G Network Requirements Will Spur a Packet-Optical Transport Renaissance

By Sterling Perrin, Heavy Reading

For the past several years, the optical industry has been driven by data center interconnect. We expect this trend to continue at OFC — with a host of announcements driving line rates up to 600 Gbit/s as well as boosting densities and reducing power consumption. These are good developments for the future of Webscale applications can cloud computing.

But — more quietly — we are also expecting a separate trend to emerge this year — the return of packet-optical convergence, driven by the coming of 5G. There is good reason why packet-optical suppliers have been quiet lately — the market segment has struggled in recent years. As tallied by Heavy Reading, metro P-OTS revenue declined globally in 2017, following a flat performance in 2016. By contrast, the metro DCI segment has boomed during this time-period, increasing revenue at double-digit rates. [more]

1.2T — The Next Frontier

By Ferris Lipscomb, NeoPhotonics

Here’s a prediction for OFC: 400G is now considered “slow,” so get ready for “1.2T” — as in 1.2Terabits per second transmission, which is the next big threshold in optical communications. One Terabit is 1000 Gigabits, which in turn is 1000 Megabits. So a Terabit is a trillion bits. The reason people are now turning to Terabit transmission is that data centers demand it, and a new generation of electronics and optical components are making it feasible.[more]

Have a good day at OFC.

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