OIF Members Tackle 400G Modules and Carrier Requirements for SDN at Quarterly Meeting

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Optical Internetworking Forum members converged in New Orleans last week to evaluate the need for technology-focused projects on 400G Modules, carrier requirements for Transport Software-Defined Networking, and Neighbor Discovery for E-NNI. During a lunchtime meeting, members listened to Andrew Schmitt, industry analyst for Infonetics, talk about Optical Networking Trends. In addition, members approved an implementation agreement for RSVP Extensions for User Network Interface (UNI) 2.0 Signaling Specification Release 2. This IA contains RSVP-TE extensions for UNI 2.0 signaling Release 2, updating references and related Ethernet codepoints.

“There is nothing in the standards market today to use as a starting point to support 400G module solutions”

"OIF standardization efforts helped make the 100G market a great success in the face of broad competition from 40G,” said Andrew. “And the organization will continue to be an important catalyst for accelerating component availability of future technologies such as 400G, pluggable coherent, or direct-detect 100G."

The Physical and Link Layer Working Group started a new project to define a module interface Implementation Agreement targeting 400G long-haul transmission.

“There is nothing in the standards market today to use as a starting point to support 400G module solutions,” said Karl Gass of TriQuint Semiconductor and the Physical and Link Layer Working Group - Optical vice chair. “Definition of a 400G long-haul module provides the industry with technology parameters for near-term component development and implementation strategies.”

The Carrier Working Group members agreed to provide Carrier requirements on Transport SDN, detailing transport functions for SDN use cases.

“The OIF ecosystem provides Carrier members a platform to express their requirements for certain technologies and SDN is certainly one of interest by our Carrier members,” said Hans-Martin Foisel of Deutsche Telekom and the OIF Carrier Working Group chair. “Additionally, the OIF has been invited to talk at several industry venues this year on the SDN technology.”

The OIF will be presenting on January 30^th at IIRWDM & Next Generation Optical Networking APAC on the OIF’s role beyond 100G and on SDN.

Additionally, a project on OIF Neighbor Discovery plans to identify discovery requirements by OIF Carriers and expedite the deployments of OIF E-NNI and UNI standards in carrier optical transport networks. Previous OIF Global E-NNI Interoperability Tests and carrier E-NNI field trials, have shown that manual configuration of E-NNI adjacency is a time-consuming and error-prone process. A scalable and automated neighbor discovery process is necessary to make E-NNI interfaces plug-and-play, thus facilitate its deployment.

OIF Day at Deutsche Telekom

The OIF will hold “OIF Day at Deutsche Telekom” on February 28, 2013. This event will be a half-day, live, interactive and educational workshop featuring OIF and Deutsche Telekom subject matter experts covering: OIF projects and directions, multi-domain networking and 100G and beyond. Through these exclusive, member-only events, the OIF is directly reaching out to understand carrier challenges and strategies unlike any other industry forum.

Elections

Hans-Martin Foisel of Deutsche Telekom was re-elected as the Carrier Working Group chair and will serve a two-year term. With a Board seat opening due to a resignation, Vishnu Shukla of Verizon will move to the role of president and Dave Brown of Alcatel Lucent will serve the remainder of the board term vacated.

About the OIF

Launched in 1998, the OIF is the first industry group to unite representatives from data and optical networking disciplines, including many of the world's leading carriers, component manufacturers and system vendors. The OIF promotes the development and deployment of interoperable networking solutions and services through the creation of Implementation Agreements (IAs) for optical, interconnect, network processing, component and networking systems technologies. The OIF actively supports and extends the work of standards bodies and industry forums with the goal of promoting worldwide compatibility of optical internetworking products. Information on the OIF can be found at http://www.oiforum.com.