Briefing: Flexible elastic-bandwidth networks

Vendors and service providers are implementing the first examples of flexible, elastic-bandwidth networks. Infinera and Microsoft detailed one such network at the Layer123 Terabit Optical and Data Networking conference held earlier this year.

Optical networking expert Ioannis Tomkos of the Athens Information Technology Center explains what is flexible, elastic bandwidth.

Part 1: Flexible elastic bandwidth

"We cannot design anymore optical networks assuming that the available fibre capacity is abundant" 

Prof. Tomkos

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2020 vision

In a panel discussion at the recent Level123 Terabit Optical and Data Networking conference, Kim Roberts, senior director coherent systems at Ciena, shared his thoughts about the future of optical transmission. 

Final part : Optical transmission in 2020

"Four hundred Gigabit and one Terabit are not going to start in long-haul"

Kim Roberts, Ciena 

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Optical transmission's era of rapid capacity growth

Kim Roberts, senior director coherent systems at Ciena, moves from theory to practice with a discussion of practical optical transmission systems supporting 100Gbps, and in future, 400 Gigabit and 1 Terabit line rates. This discussion is based on a talk Roberts gave at the Layer123's Terabit Optical and Data Networking conference held in Cannes recently. 

Part 2: Commercial systems

The industry is experiencing a period of rapid growth in optical transmission capacity. The years 1995 till 2006 were marked by a gradual increase in system capacity with the move to 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) wavelengths.  But the pace picked up with the advent of first 40Gbps direct detection and then coherent transmission, as shown by the red curve in the chart. 

Source: Ciena

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The capacity limits facing optical networking

Ever wondered just how close systems vendors are in approaching the limits of fibre capacity in optical networks? Kim Roberts, senior director coherent systems at Ciena, adds some mathematical rigour with his explanation of Shannon's bound, from a workshop he gave at the recent Layer123's Terabit Optical and Data Networking conference held in Cannes. 

Part 1 Shannon's bound

 Source: Ciena

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