01 Jan 0001
00:00 - 00:00
Optical networks are under pressure from soaring traffic, disaggregation, and the demand for automation, yet manual management remains brittle in the face of complex telemetry and rising cyber-risks. AI offers a path forward: from auto-provisioning and predictive maintenance to real-time resource tuning, anomaly detection, and security analytics, deployments already show gains in performance, resilience, and cost efficiency. Building on our OFC 2024 workshop and 2025 special session, the upcoming panel will explore how large language models and generative AI can take this further—embedding intent-based interfaces, generating configuration code, and orchestrating multi-vendor, multi-layer domains toward self-optimizing, self-securing optical networks. To ensure an engaging and insightful session, the panel will focus on:
The key discussions to address in this panel are:
- Evolving challenges in optical network control and management under growing bandwidth demands and complexity, and how AI can address them.
- Current and emerging AI/ML applications, highlighting concrete use cases, demonstrated benefits, and enabling technologies.
- Intent-based networking, exploring how high-level business objectives can translate into automated configurations and management actions.
- Predictive maintenance and anomaly detection, with the latest advances in anticipating failures and detecting security threats.
- Network optimization and resource allocation, examining how AI can dynamically improve performance, efficiency, and sustainability.
- Deployment at scale, addressing challenges and opportunities in real-world adoption, and the key considerations for operators.
Organizers
-
Ashwin Gumaste
Microsoft, USA
-
Ricard Vilalta
CTTC, Spain