18 March 2013
It’s another beautiful day in Anaheim, California, where I’m eager to get started at the first full day of the 2013 OFC/NFOEC conference. Fortunately I remembered to download the OFC mobile app from Guidebook so I could keep track of everything that was going on, and keep my social media followers up to date at the same time. Here’s an update on my first day’s activities, and if there’s something you’d like me to address then drop me a line on Twitter (@Dr_Casimer).
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By Casimer DeCusatis, Ph.D. | Posted: 17 March 2013
I just flew in from New York (no, my arms aren't tired), and made my way to the Anaheim Marriot, which will be my base of operations for OFC 2013.
Today I participated in a roadmap workshop sponsored by the Optoelectronics Industry Association (OIDA) on metrics and roadmaps for future “scale-out” data centers. My fellow workshop participants included representatives from Dell, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, U.C. San Diego, the Fraunhofer Institute, APIC Corporation, Finisar, and Ovum.
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By Casimer DeCusatis, Ph.D. | Posted: 8 March 2013
The annual OFC/NFOEC meeting is less than a month away, and it couldn’t come at a better time for those of us working on cloud computing and data center networking. More than ever before, photonics is poised to play a critical role in this industry, leading a significant revolution in the way that computer systems are interconnected. In this blog, I’ll explore the issue in more detail and give you a peek at some of the hot topics coming up in March at OFC.
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By Dr. Ioannis Tomkos | Posted: 7 March 2013
We have written extensively on this blog about the high quality of the OFC/NFOEC technical program and the many exciting new topics generating innovation. However, another important highlight of OFC/NFOEC is the exhibition and the numerous events that are co-located with the booths. The OFC/NFOEC exhibition is certainly a joyful “playground” for photonics experts (and “geeks”!) and I am sure that many of the event participants would enjoy their visit to the exhibition space more than a visit to nearby Disneyland. There are some good reasons for that!
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By Ernesto Burden | Posted: 26 February 2013
Our editor-in-chief Stephen Hardy’s always prescient crystal ball gazing had me well primed to have my eye caught by the roster of industry luminaries slated to dig into software defined networks (SDNs) at OFC/NFOEC March 19, 2013.
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By Jim Theodoras | Posted: 19 February 2013
OFC/NFOEC 2013 is rapidly approaching, and those with young kids (or an inner child) are surely looking forward to a return to Anaheim due to a nearby attraction with a large talking rodent as its mascot.
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By Casimer DeCusatis, Ph.D. | Posted: 24 January 2013
I feel the need….the need for speed!
Time seems to be going by faster and faster – it seems like we just got done celebrating the new year, and we’re already getting ready for OFC/NFOEC in March. And it’s certain that faster speeds will also be the subject of much discussion at this year’s conference. I’d like to slow things down a bit, though, and reflect on what’s been going on in the industry to drive the most recent push towards higher and higher data rates over longer and longer optical networks.
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By Dr. Ioannis Tomkos | Posted: 24 January 2013
A common issue that the OFC/NFOEC community has tried to address since the first OFC took place 38 years ago is how to increase the capacity of optical communications systems, which remains an important and challenging problem to this day. To address these capacity scaling needs, optical communications scientists try to explore all possible “dimensions” and properties of light, most recently the multiple spatial modes in multi-mode fibers.
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By Dr. Ioannis Tomkos | Posted: 21 December 2012
OFC/NFOEC is always about the “next generation” of technology, devices, components, systems and networks. It is a venue where major research breakthroughs are presented for the first time and where all new scientific and technology developments are discussed. The term “next-generation” used in the OFC/NFOEC community often indicates what is coming up in the arena of access networks with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architectures and the relevant service offerings. In this research area, there is a tendency to use the term “next generation (NG)” for every technology that comes after the currently deployed FTTH networks.
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By Casimer DeCusatis, Ph.D., Distinguished Engineer, IBM System Networking Strategic Alliances, Member, IBM Academy of Technology IBM Corporation | Posted: 18 December 2012
Years ago, the distinction between telecommunications and data communications was pretty clear. Telecommunications referred to moving information (usually voice traffic) over long distances (hundreds or thousands of km), while everything else that stayed within a single data center was called data communication. Long distance voice traffic ran over ATM and SONET protocols, while many data centers contained a mixture of local area networks (Ethernet), storage area networks (Fibre Channel), clustering fabrics (InfiniBand), and other lesser used or proprietary protocols. Today, of course, the line between these two fields is blurry at best, and many people would argue that there really isn’t a meaningful distinction between them any longer. With the advent of new applications such as cloud computing and a renewed interest in long-standing applications such as disaster backup and business continuity, all types of traffic need to run well at extended distances. In this blog, we’ll consider the brave new world of distance-independent networking and protocol agnostic channel extenders using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), a couple of topics that are sure to be widely discussed and debated in the many workshops and panels for OFC/NFOEC 2013.
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