Internet users are consuming more bandwidth than ever -- much of it spurred on by the ever-increasing demand for online video files and the popularity of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. This rapidly rising appetite for network bandwidth is also fueling advances in optical technologies. By providing cheap bandwidth and greater robustness, the optical network industry continues to deliver on its promise since the original innovation of dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) in the mid 90s that multiplied bandwidth by a factor of 16 and slashed costs.
Optical networks, based on the emergence of the optical layer in transport networks, offer fast, readily available bandwidth at reduced costs. They're ideal for a broad range of Internet applications, including high-quality video delivery for entertainment purposes. Simply put, everything rides on top of the optical network.
More innovation and competition is badly needed in the optical market in order for the sector to have an even greater impact on bandwidth. For example, if the Internet were to experience a 10x increase in bandwidth at 1/10 the cost, this would enable significantly faster content distribution in a lot of areas beyond entertainment, including storage area networking, defense, and virtually every aspect of communication.
One specific technology that’s already benefiting from optical networking advances is "telepresence," via which high-definition video images and audio are transmitted to give users the illusion of sitting on the opposite side of the remote party’s conference table.
As corporations become increasingly global, they’re using telepresence to save business travelers time, costs, and human wear and tear. The technology offers a promising alternative to face-to-face corporate meetings. For example, when executives conduct telephone conference calls, much of their body language and other subtle aspects of communication is lost. Executives feel compelled to make a physical trip to have a more productive meeting, especially when large business transactions are at hand. Telepresence works to mend that problem.
I think telepresence is an exciting application. I know that Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Nortel Networks Ltd. are doing their best to market the advantages of telepresence. But, I mention the technology only as an example of the kinds of widespread communication that can take advantage of fast and readily available bandwidth. More -- and cheaper -- bandwidth would be good for the entire Web ecosystem, not just telepresence.
— H. Michael Zadikian, pioneer in high-speed networking systems
That is of course the $64,000 question. It remains to be seen what the innovations would be, but whatever they are they must deliver a step function of change similar to what DWDM did. A good target? 1 Tbps Ethernet long haul near the economics of several 10 Gbps Ethernet today. The problem is that incremental enhancements to current technologies won't get us there anytime soon which underscores the need groundbreaking innovation.
With respect to the second post which discusses considerations like OEO and the elimination of SONET and other OEO devices, having spent much time personally on the tradeoffs, I really don't believe the choice of either approach or a combination of both (which in a way the way it is now) makes much of a difference on the fundamental problem which is that bandwidth costs way too much and the sheer capacity is not available to enable the mass deployment of some of the applications we've talked about especially those involving high quality video (telepresence or entertainment grade viewable content.) Of course, this is an area that can absorb a lot of ink and we can certainly go down that path, but I don't see any change of that nature making the kind of impact we should seek.
As to the third posting, clearly wireless technologies will enhance local communication by increasing localized capacity, but of course at some point a still substantial amount of the traffic (we can argue even more in absolute terms than today) would still traverse both the metro networks as well as the long haul networks. Personally, I don't see these technologies to be alternatives to optical technologies. We will need -- and use -- both.
It's true that the race for more bandwidth would definitely continue unabated because of our technological advances and social changes. The consumer trend you mentioned would likely grow exponentially in the forseable future and hope that Optical Networks would equipt enough to provide the required bandwidth and flexibility to enble end-end wavelength services.
My concerns however are two-fold: Does Optical Networks Technology offer more reliable and cost-effective services than other technologies like Avaya 10G and WiMax? Secondly, which of the following markets would stand to benefit more from Optical Networks technology:
I agree that optical networks offer the potential for greater bandwidth and faster speeds within the Internet core networks. One of the challenges is to eliminate the unnecessary optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversions that now occur wiithin the SONET based transport networks. These OEO conversions cause latency, require more hardware and result in increased operating costs for service providers. The Internet backbone networks are slowly evolving away from SONET and toward an all-optical infrastructure, but standards above 40G are still not defined and other issues such as a unified control plane (between the optical and IP layers) have to be resolved.
It is not the optical technologies that are holding us back (in terms of speed and BW). But rather it is the transport protocols that carriers are using on top of the DWDM optical networks. SONET and OTN offer higher speeds (up to 40G) but at the expense of wasted overhead BW, needless OEO conversions and functional overlap between protocols (as both the IP layers and SONET layers perform restoration and NMS). The advances in optical switching devices such as optical cross-connects (OXC) and optical add-drop-multiplexers (OADM) now enable IP traffic to be switched and processed out of the core (in the edge networks). Therefore, I believe the solution to increase speed within the core networks is to eliminate the unneccessary transport protocols such as SONET and OTN, and run IP directly over DWDM. With IP over DWDM networks, many of the superfluous protocols and OEO devices can be eliminated. The result is a high speed optical core that only processes the IP traffic to be dropped.
Hi Michael,
Can you be a little more specific about the type of innovation you would like to see today in the optical market? Perhaps there are some technologies you could cite as being interesting/cutting edge?
--Insultant
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