OFC 2025 industry reflections - Part 3
Gazettabyte is asking industry figures for their thoughts after attending the OFC show in San Francisco. In the penultimate part, the contributions are from Cisco’s Bill Gartner, Lumentum’s Matt Sysak, Ramya Barna of Mixx Technologies, and Ericsson’s Antonio Tartaglia.
Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Optical Systems and Optics, Cisco
There was certainly much buzz around co-packaged optics at Nvidia’s GTC event, and that carried over into OFC.
The prevailing thinking seems to be that large-scale co-packaged optics deployment is years away. While co-packaged optics has many benefits, there are challenges that need to be overcome before that happens.
Existing solutions, such as linear pluggable optics (LPO), continue to be discussed as interim solutions that could achieve close to the power savings of co-packaged optics and preserve a multi-vendor pluggable market. That development in the industry will be an intermediate solution before co-packaged optics is required.
By all accounts, IP-over-DWDM, or Routed Optical Networking as Cisco calls it, is now mainstream, enabling network operators to take advantage of the cost, space, and power savings in almost every part of the network.
Through the Openzr+ and Openroadm models, coherent pluggable usage has expanded beyond data centre interconnect (DCI) and metro applications. The subject was covered in many presentations and announcements, including several trials by Arelion and Internet2 of the new 800-gigabit ZR+ and 400-gigabit ultra-long-haul coherent pluggable. ZR and ZR+ pluggable optics now account for more than half of the coherent ports industry-wide.
I also saw some coherent-lite demonstrations, and while the ecosystem is expanding, it appears this will be a corner case for the near future.
Lastly, power reduction was another strong theme, which is where co-packaged optics, LPO, and linear retimed optics (LRO) originated. As optics, switches, routers, and GPU (graphics processor unit) servers become faster and denser, data centres cannot support the insatiable need for more power. Network operators and equipment manufacturers are seeking alternative ways to lower power, such as liquid cooling and liquid immersion.
What did I learn at OFC? Pradeep Sindhu, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Silicon with Microsoft, gave one of the plenary talks. He believes we should stop racing to higher lane speeds because it will compromise scale. He believes 200 gigabits per second (Gbps) is a technology sweet spot.
As for show surprises, the investor presence was markedly larger than usual, a positive for the industry. With almost 17,000 people attending OFC this year and AI driving incremental bandwidth that optics will serve, you could feel the excitement on the show floor.
We’re looking forward to seeing what technologies will prevail in 2026.
Matt Sysak, CTO, Cloud and Networking Platform at Lumentum.
The industry spotlight at OFC was on next-generation data centre interconnects and growing AI-driven bandwidth demands.
Several suppliers demonstrated 400 gigabit-per-lane optics, with Lumentum showcasing both 450 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) indium phosphide Mach-Zehnder and 448 gigabit-per-lane externally modulated laser (EML) technologies.
In long-haul networking, the continued expansion of data centre traffic across longer fibre spans drives demand for high-capacity solutions such as 800G ZR C+L band transceivers. I learned at the show that the focus has shifted from incremental upgrades to building fundamentally new network layers capable of supporting AI workloads at scale. Conversations around innovations such as 400-gigabit DFB Mach-Zehnder lasers and advancements in optical circuit switches made it clear that the industry is driving innovation across every network layer.
One of the biggest surprises was the surge in optical circuit switch players. The core technology has expanded beyond traditional micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) to include liquid crystal and silicon photonics approaches. There is clearly growing demand for high-radix, low-power optical interconnects to address rising data centre power consumption.
With our proven expertise in MEMS and the ability to scale port counts with low insertion loss, we believe Lumentum’s optical circuit switch offers clear advantages over competing technologies.
Ramya Barna, Head of Marketing and Key Partnerships, Mixx Technologies.
It was evident at OFC 2025 that the industry is entering a new phase, not just of optical adoption but also of architectural introspection.
Co-packaged optics was the dominant theme on the show floor, with vendors aligning around tighter electrical-optical integration at the switch level. However, discussions with hyperscalers were more layered and revealing.
Meta spoke about the need for full-stack co-optimisation: treating photonics not just as a peripheral, but as part of the compute fabric.
AWS emphasised co-designing power and photonics—optics and electricity as first-class citizens in infrastructure planning.
Microsoft, meanwhile, challenged the community on reliability and manufacturability at the DRAM scale, demanding optics that can be trusted, such as memory.
These inputs reinforce a core truth: the AI bottleneck is not compute capacity, but bandwidth, latency, and power at scale.
The current wave of co-packaged optics implementations is a step forward, but it remains constrained by legacy system boundaries where retimers, linear interfaces, and electrical serdes bottlenecks still dominate.
At Mixx, we’ve long viewed this not as an integration problem but an architectural one. AI infrastructure requires a redesign in which photonics is not bolted on but directly integrated into compute—native optical paths between ASICs. That is our thesis with optical input-output (I/O).
OFC 2025 reinforced that the industry is converging on the same realisation: optical interfaces must move deeper into the package, closer to the logic. We’re aligned on timelines, and most importantly, on the problem definition.
Looking forward to OFC 2026, where system-level transformation takes over.
Antonio Tartaglia, System Manager and Expert in Photonics at Radio and Transport Engineering, Transport Systems at Ericsson.
The effort invested in traditional telecom connectivity is decreasing, and more attention is being paid to solutions that have the potential to unlock new revenue streams for communications service providers (CSP).
A good example is distributed fibre sensing, which involves reusing deployed telecom-grade fibre plants. Optical connectivity for satellite communications was also a trending topic, with much excitement about low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites as a complement to radio access networks (RAN).
OFC 2025 highlighted that the telecom industry must continue to reuse wisely and adapt optical technologies developed for datacom, which is acting as the innovation powerhouse for the whole industry.
The only way to reuse the solutions developed for data centres is, well … to build a data centre. Still, the same basic technologies can often be reused and adapted to telecom use cases with reasonable development effort.
I believe industry-wide initiatives (MSAs, alliances, consortia) pursuing this objective will become even more critical for telecom.
Speaking of the segment close to my heart – optical connectivity for RAN – the adaptation of datacom technologies works fine for short reach (<2km) optical interconnects, where we reuse one optical lane of data centres’ multi-lane optical interfaces.
After OFC 2025, I believe the relentless optimisation of coherent technology towards shorter and shorter reaches, and the concurrent rise of packet fronthaul in RAN, could pave the way for a new breed of ‘coherent-lite’ optical solutions for radio transport networks.
It was awe-inspiring to hear talks on scaling AI compute clusters, which are now aiming at the ‘psychological’ threshold of AI models with 100 trillion parameters—the estimated compute power of a human brain.
This journey will require clusters of millions of interconnected GPUs resulting in 2 megawatt data centres, with electric power availability limiting the choice of locations. An emerging research area to reduce power is integrated optics “optical co-processors” for GPUs, performing energy-efficient vector-to-matrix multiplications in the optical domain. Although technology readiness is low, start-ups are already working on this challenge.
The most obvious solution to the power conundrum seems to be dividing these GPU mega-clusters across smaller sites. This approach will increase the demand on data centre interconnects (DCI), requiring them to function as long-haul RDMA (remote direct memory access) interconnects.
These interconnects will need ultra-low latency and precise time synchronisation, which could be very attractive for future RAN transport needs.
Books in 2019
Gazettabyte asks industry figures each year to cite the memorable books they have read. These include fiction, non-fiction and work-related titles.
Here are the choices of Cisco’s Bill Gartner, Sylvie Menezo of silicon photonics start-up, Scintil Photonics, and Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst at Cignal AI.
Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Optical Systems and Optics.
At the top of my list is The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Mukherjee does an amazing job of telling the story of the gene, providing historical context dating back to pre-Darwin times through to modern advances in gene therapy. The material is complex but he is great at describing the evolution of thinking about genes and progress in the genome project in layman’s terms.
The book leaves me in awe of how much has been accomplished, especially in the past 20 years, and yet how much more we have to learn about this fascinating topic, how progress in this area might be applied to solve some of medicine’s most challenging problems, and the moral dilemma that we confront as we think about altering nature’s work.
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O’Clery is an amazing story of a man who went from rags to riches, built one of the most profitable private businesses in history (Duty-Free Shops), and earned billions. He then gave it all away and did so anonymously. He lived frugally and was adamant that his contributions be kept secret. It is an inspiring story of an American hero who touched the lives of millions who will never know.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel includes a foreword by Neil Armstrong. I am fascinated by stories that highlight how one individual persists in a vision and has a major impact on the world. In the 18th century, it was common for entire fleets of ships to run aground or get lost as navigation techniques were primitive.
Latitude was relatively straightforward, based on the angle of the sun relative to the horizon (and the date), but determining longitudinal position was often guesswork. After several disasters, including one where over 200 sailors were killed, the British government established a prize for the solution.
This is a fantastic story of a relatively unknown watchmaker who single-handedly solved the problem and then persuaded the sceptics that his chronometer was superior to any available method.
Lastly, I read Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham. This is a fantastic story of the intimate and at times stormy relationship between FDR and Winston Churchill. The story, unlike many WWII narratives, is told from the perspective of their interactions. FDR and Churchill were magnificent leaders, each of whom took a principled stand against Nazism and Fascism. It is also frightening to contemplate the course history may have taken had lesser leaders been in place.
Sylvie Menezo, CEO and CTO of Scintil Photonics.
The book I recommend is a novel I read this summer, La Tresse (The Braid) by Laetitia Colombani. It is a tale of three women, each from a different continent and experiencing different living conditions, yet their lives happen to be connected by something at the end of the book. To me, all three are very beautiful and strong women figures, moved by a ‘different something’ deep inside them, and that is what makes them beautiful!
Andrew Schmitt, founder and directing analyst at Cignal AI
It was a good reading year for me. Starting with fiction, my overall pick of the year is the Three-Body Problem series by Cixin Liu, a science fiction story of epic scale that stretches from the Cultural Revolution in China into the distant future.
It was written in Chinese and as a result, the style, prose and cultural perspective are different in a refreshing way. This series is right up there with Dune, Asimov and all the sci-fi greats. It is a must-read if that is your thing.
Martha Wells turned out more short novels to conclude the Murderbot Diaries, a series that I reviewed in 2018. I also read Neal Stephenson’s FALL; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel this year. He’s maintained a steady production of books but I don’t think his latest books are as good as his archive (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, others). FALL was very disappointing, particularly the second half – I don’t recommend it. Read the archive instead.
It was an intense non-fiction year, so I’ll hit the good stuff that I strongly recommend.
I picked up Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: And Other Tough-Love Truths to Make You a Better Writer by Steven Pressfield on a twitter recommendation and it resonated with me. So much written market research lacks respect and appreciation of the client’s time and Pressfield shares simple, useful tips to make your reader care about what you are writing. Anyone who writes for others should read this, and it is quick.
This book leads me to one of Pressfield’s big hits, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, a narrative history of the Spartans and the battle. As an engineer, I never had the time – and frankly, the interest – to study Ancient Greece. Pressfield vividly brings Sparta and Greece to life and recounts the events leading up to the battle of the famous “300”. A fantastic book.
My son had to read Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham over the summer for High School.
We read it together; a highly recommended thing to do with your teenagers. Better yet, after the book, we were treated with the excellent “Chernobyl” drama on HBO. If you liked the HBO series, definitely read the book as it tells the story in a comprehensive and detailed way without an artistic license. The size, scale, and sacrifices endured by the Soviets to contain the disaster are incredible. The organisational ineptitude before and right after the event are horrifying. The same top-down decision hierarchy that caused the problem was paradoxically the only way to get it cleaned up.
My last recommendation is Shoe Dog: A Memoir – by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight. It recounts the genesis of the company as a supplier of track shoes made in Japan following WWII as the country rapidly emerged as an export powerhouse. It is a book about post-war Japan, raw entrepreneurship, and building what at the time was a new sales and marketing model combining athletics and fashion. One of the better business books I’ve read.
Books in 2019 – Final part, click here
Verizon prepares its next-gen PON request for proposal
Vincent O'Byrne
The NG-PON2 request for proposal (RFP) is being issued after the US operator completed a field test that showed a 40 gigabit NG-PON2 system working alongside Verizon’s existing GPON customer traffic.
The field test involved installing a NG-PON2 optical line terminal (OLT) at a Verizon central office and linking it to a FiOS customer’s home 5 km away. A nearby business location was also included in the trial.
Cisco and PT Inovação, an IT and research company owned by Portugal Telecom, worked with Verizon on the trial and provided the NG-PON2 equipment.
NG-PON2 is the follow-on development to XG-PON1, the 10 gigabit GPON standard. NG-PON2 supports both point-to-point links and a combination of time- and wavelength-division multiplexing that in effect supports a traditional time-division multiplexed PON per wavelength, known as TWDM-PON. The rates TWDM-PON supports include 10 gigabit symmetrical, 10 gigabit downstream and 2.5 gigabit upstream, and 2.5 gigabit symmetrical.
Verizon field-tested the transmission of NG-PON2 signals over a fibre already carrying GPON traffic to show that the two technologies can co-exist without interference, including Verizon’s analogue RF video signal. Another test demonstrated how, in the event of a OLT card fault at the central office, the customer’s optical network terminal (ONT) equipment can detect the fault and retune to a new wavelength, restoring the service within seconds.
Now we know we can deploy this technology on the same fibre without interference and upgrade the customer when the market demands such speed
Verizon is not saying when it will deploy the next-generation access technology. “We have not said as the technology has to become mature and the costs to reduce sufficiently,” says Vincent O'Byrne, director of access technology for Verizon.
It will also be several years before such speeds are needed, he says. “But now we know we can deploy this technology on the same fibre without interference and upgrade the customer when the market demands such speed.”
Verizon expects first NG-PON2 services will be for businesses, while residential customers will be offered the service once the technology is mature and cost-effective, says O’Byrne.
Vodafone is another operator conducting a TWDM-PON field trial based on four 10 gigabit wavelengths, using equipment from Alcatel-Lucent. Overall, Alcatel-Lucent says it has been involved in 16 customer TWDM-PON trials, half in Asia Pacific and the rest split between North America and EMEA.
Further reading
For an update on the NG-PON2 standard, click here
Compass-EOS raises $42M
Compass-EOS has raised $42 million in investment. The Israeli start-up launched its r10004 IP core router in March and has so far announced two customers: NTT Communications and the China Education and Research Network, CERNET. The company says it has a second, tier-one operator that has yet to be announced.
Asaf Somekh with the icPhotonics chip
"Both global operators have purchased routers on several occasions for several types of deployments," says Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Compass-EOS. “There are also a couple of smaller operators that we cannot disclose at this stage." The company is involved in several trials in the US, Japan and EMEA.
The r10004 core router uses the company's novel icPhotonics chip that has a Terabit-plus optical interface. The chip, which houses a merchant network processor, integrates 168, 8 Gigabit VCSELs and 168 photodetectors for a total bandwidth of 1.344Tbps in each direction.
Eight chips are connected in a full mesh, removing the need for a router's switch fabric and mid-plane that connect the router cards. The result is a 6U-sized compact router platform that saves on power and cost.
First router deployments have been operational for over a year. Somekh says customers have been positive about the router's ease of deployment, operation and robustness, and have not encountered significant issues with deployments. "This is very different from their past experiences of introducing a new vendor into their networks," he says.
The latest funding will be used to develop further the icPhotonics chip
Somekh also says that using the router delivers revenue benefits. Replacing a traditional three-chassis - 126U in total - core router with the 6U one has enabled the operator to deploy servers in the resulting reclaimed space. Deploying the router with servers in colocation data centres has turned them from cost centres into revenue-generating ones.
The company said the latest raised funding will be used to develop further the icPhotonics chip. Compass-EOS has talked about a future chip with channels operating at 32Gbps. “We're also investing in innovative software and on the marketing side, focussing on the US market and Japan with a stronger presence there,” says Somekh.
The company also announced it has cut staff. There are now 100 people working at the company compared to 150 employed in March. "Looking at the strategy moving forward we decided to make these adjustments to better fit the objectives and financial plan," says Somekh.
The latest round of investment takes the total amount of funding raised by the start-up to over $162 million. Investors in the latest round include Comcast Ventures and Cisco Systems.
Mellanox to acquire silicon photonics player Kotura
Source: Gazettabyte
Mellanox Technologies has announced its intention to acquire silicon photonics player, Kotura, for $82 million.
The acquisition will enable Mellanox to deliver 100 Gigabit Infiniband and Ethernet interconnect in the coming two years. lt will also provide Kotura with the resources needed to bring its 100 Gigabit QSFP to market. Mellanox will also gain Kotura's optical engine for use in active optical cables and new mid-plane platform designs, as well as future higher speed interfaces.
The news is also significant for the optical component industry. Kotura is one of the three established merchant silicon photonics players - the others being LightWire and Luxtera - that have spent years developing their technologies.
LightWire was acquired by Cisco Systems in March 2012 for US $271 million and now Mellanox plans to acquire Kotura. The two equipment vendors recognise the value of the technology, bringing it in-house to reduce system interconnect costs and as a long term differentiator for their equipment and ASIC designs. Mellanox, as a silicon photonics player, will compete with Intel, with its own silicon photonics technology, and Cisco Systems.
Kotura has been using its technology to sell telecom products such as variable optical attenuators and multiplexers. The start-up recently announced its 100 Gig QSFP that uses wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmitter and receiver chips. The product is to become available in 2014.
In an interview last year, Kotura's CTO, Mehdi Asghari, discussed a roadmap showing how its 100 Gigabit silicon photonics technology could scale to 400 Gigabit and eventually 1.6 Terabit.
"Our devices are capable of running at 40 or 50 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps), depending on the electronics. The electronics is going to limit the speed of our devices. We can very easily see going from four channels at 25Gbps to 16 channels at 25Gbps to provide a 400 Gigabit solution," Asghari told Gazettabyte.
Kotura also discussed how the line rate could be increased to 50Gbps either using a non-return-to-zero (NRZ) line rate or using a multi-level modulation such as pulse amplitude modulation (PAM).
"To get to 1.6 Terabit transceivers, we envisage something running at 40Gbps times 40 channels or 50Gbps times 32 channels. We already have done a single receiver chip demonstrator that has 40 channels, each at 40Gbps," said Asghari.
"These things in silicon are not a big deal. The III-V guys really struggle with yield and cost. But you can envisage scaling to that level of complexity in a silicon platform."
Silicon photonics will not replace existing VCSEL or indium phosphide-based transceiver designs. But there is no doubting silicon photonics is emerging as a key optical technology and the segment is heating up.
If the early start-ups are being acquired, there have been more recent silicon photonics players entering the marketplace such as Aurrion, Skorpios Technologies and Teraxion. There are also internal developments among equipment players such as Alcatel-Lucent, HP Labs and IBM. Indeed Kotura has worked closely with Oracle (Sun Microsystems)
Further acquisitions of silicon photonic players should be expected as companies start designing next generation, denser systems and adopt 100 Gigabit and faster interfaces.
Equally, established optical component and module companies will likely enter quietly (and not so quietly) the marketplace adding silicon photonics to their technology toolkits when the timing is right.
Trends to watch
Two industry trends are underway regarding silicon photonics.
The first is system vendors wanting to own the technology to reduce their costs while recognising a need to control and understand the technology as they tackle more complex equipment designs.
The other, what at first glance is a contrarian trend, is the democratisation of silicon photonics.
The technology is slowly passing from the select few to become more generally available for industry use. For this to happen, the relevant design tools need to mature as do third-party fabrication plants that will manufacture the silicon photonics designs.
Appendix:
On June 4th, 2013, Mellanox announced a definitive agreement to acquire chip company IPtronics for $47.5 million as it builds out its in-house technologies for optical interconnect. Click here
Futher reading:
Avago to acquire CyOptics, click here
Cisco Systems demonstrates 100 Gigabit technologies
* Announces 100 Gigabit transmission over 4,800km
"CPAK helps accelerate the feasibility and cost points of deploying 100Gbps"
Stephen Liu, Cisco
Cisco Sytems has announced that its 100 Gigabit coherent module has achieved a reach of 4,800km without signal regeneration. The span was achieved in the lab and the system vendor intends to verify the span in a customer's network.
The optical transmission system achieved a reach of 3,000km over low-loss fibre when first announced in 2012. The extended reach is not a result of a design upgrade, rather the 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) module is being used on a link with Raman amplification.
Cisco says it started shipping its 100Gbps coherent module in June 2012. "We have shipped over 2,000 100Gbps coherent dense WDM ports," says Sultan Dawood, marketing manager at Cisco. The 100Gbps ports include line-side 100Gbps interfaces integrated within Cisco's ONS 15454 multi-service transport platform and its CRS core router supporting its IP-over-DWDM elastic core architecture.
Cisco has also coupled the ASR 9922 series router to the ONS 15454. "We are extending what we have done for IP and optical convergence in the core," says Stephen Liu, director of market management at Cisco. "There is now a common solution to the [network] edge."
None of Cisco's customers has yet used 100Gbps over a 3,000km span, never mind 4,800km. But the reach achieved is an indicator of the optical transmission performance. "The [distance] performance is really a proxy for usefulness," says Liu. "If you take that 3,000km over low-loss fibre, what that buys you is essentially a greater degree of tolerance for existing fibre in the ground."
Much industry attention is being given to the next-generation transmission speeds of 400Gbps and one Terabit. This requires support for super-channels - multi-carrier signals to transmit 400Gbps and one Terabit as well as flexible spectrum to pack the multi-carrier signals efficiently across the fibre's spectrum. But Cisco argues that faster transmission is only one part of the engineering milestones to be achieved, especially when 100Gbps deployment is still in its infancy.
To benefit 100Gbps deployments, Cisco has officially announced its own CPAK 100Gbps client-side optical transceiver after discussing the technology over the last year. "CPAK helps accelerate the feasibility and cost points of deploying 100Gbps," says Liu.
CPAK
The CPAK is Cisco' first optical transceiver using silicon photonics technology following its acquisition of LightWire. The CPAK is a compact optical transceiver to replace the larger and more power hungry 100Gbps CFP interfaces.
The CPAK is being launched at the same time as many companies are announcing CFP2 multi-source agreement (MSA) optical transceiver products. Cisco stresses that the CPAK conforms to the IEEE 100GBASE-LR4 and -SR10 100Gbps standards. Indeed at OFC/NFOEC it is demonstrating the CPAK interfacing with a CFP2.
The CPAK will be used across several Cisco platforms but the first implementation is for the ONS 15454.
The CPAK transceiver will be generally available in the summer of 2013.
Cisco Systems' intelligent light
Network optimisation continues to exercise operators and content service providers as their requirements evolve with the growth of services such as cloud computing. Cisco Systems' announced elastic core architecture aims to tackle networking efficiency and address particular service provider requirements.
“The core [network] needs to be more robust, agile and programmable”
Sultan Dawood, Cisco
“The core [network] needs to be more robust, agile and programmable – especially with the advent of cloud,” says Sultan Dawood, senior manager, service provider marketing at Cisco. “As service providers look at next-generation infrastructure, convergence of IP and optical is going to have a big play.”
Cisco's elastic core architecture combines several developments. One is the integration of Cisco's 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) coherent transponder, first introduced on its ROADM platform, onto its router to enable IP-over-DWDM.
This is part of what Cisco calls nLight – intelligent light - which itself has three components: its 100Gbps coherent ASIC hardware, the nLight control plane and nLight colourless and contentionless ROADMs. “As packet and optical networks converge, intelligence between the layers is needed,” says Dawood. “Today how the ROADM and the router communicate is limited."
There is the GMPLS [Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching] layer working at the IP layer, and WSON [Wavelength Switched Optical Layer] working at the optical layer. These two protocols are doing control plane functions at each of their respective layers. "What nLight is doing is communicating between these two layers [using existing parameters] and providing the interaction," says Dawood.
Ron Kline, principal analyst for network infrastructure at Ovum, describes nLight more generally as Cisco’s strategy for software-defined networking: "Interworking control planes to share info across platforms and add the dynamic capabilities."
The second component of Cisco's announcement is an upgrade of its carrier-grade services engine, from 20Gbps to 80Gbps, that fits within Cisco's CSR-3 core router and will be available from May 2013. The services engine enables such services as IPv6 and 'cloud routing' - network positioning which determines the most suitable resource for a customer’s request based on the content’s location and the data centre's loading.
Cisco has also added anti distributed denial of service (anti-DDoS) software to counter cyber threats. “We have licensed software that we have put into our CRS-3 so that with our VPN services we can provide threat mitigation and scrub any traffic liable to hurt our customers,” says Dawood.
nLight
According to Cisco, several issues need to be addressed between the IP and optical layers. For example, how the router and the optical infrastructure exchange information like circuit ID, path identifiers and real-time information in order to avoid the manual intervention used currently.
“With this intelligent data that is extracted due to these layers communicating, I can now make better, faster decisions that result in rapid service provisioning and service delivery,” says Dawood.
Cisco cites as an example a financial customer requesting a low-latency path. In this case, the optical network comes back through this nLight extraction process and highlights the most appropriate path. That path has a circuit ID that is assigned to the customer. If the customer then comes back to request a second identical circuit, the network can make use of the existing intelligence to deliver a similar-specification circuit.
Such a framework avoids lengthy, manual interactions between the IP and transport departments of an operator required when setting up an IP VPN, for example. By exchanging data between layers, service providers can understand and improve their network topology in real-time, and be more dynamic in how they shift resources and do capacity planning in their network.
Service providers can also improve their protection and restoration schemes and also how they configure and provision services. Such capabilities will enable operators to be more efficient in the introduction and delivery of cloud and mobile services.
Total cost of ownership
Market research firm ACG Research has done a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis of Cisco's elastic core architecture. It claims using nLight achieves up to a halving of the TCO of the optical and packet core networks in designs using protected wavelengths. It also avoids a 10% overestimation of required capacity.
Meanwhile, ACG claims an 18-month payback and 156% return on investment from a CRS CGSE service module with its anti‐DDoS service, and a 24% TCO savings from demand engineering with the improved placement of routes and cloud service workload location.
Cisco says its designed framework architecture is being promoted in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The company is also liaising with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) where relevant.
Does Cisco Systems' CPAK module threaten the CFP2?
Cisco Systems has been detailing over recent months its upcoming proprietary optical module dubbed CPAK. The development promises to reduce the market opportunity for the CFP2 multi-source agreement (MSA) and has caused some disquiet in the industry.
Source: Cisco Systems, Gazettabyte, see comments
"The CFP2 has been a bit slow - the MSA has taken longer than people expected - so Cisco announcing CPAK has frightened a few people," says Paul Brooks, director for JDSU's high speed transport test portfolio.
Brooks speculates that the advent of CPAK may even cause some module makers to skip the CFP2 and go straight to the smaller CFP4 given the time lag between the two MSAs is relatively short.
The CPAK module, smaller than the CFP2 MSA and three quarters its volume, has not been officially released and Cisco will not comment on the design but in certain company presentations the CPAK is compared with the CFP. The details are shown in the table above, with the CFP2’s details added.
The CPAK is the first example of Cisco's module design capability following its acquisition of silicon photonics player, Lightwire.
The development of the module highlights how the acquisition of core technology can give an equipment maker the ability to develop proprietary interfaces that promise costs savings and differentiation. But it also raises a question mark regarding the CFP2 and the merit of MSAs when a potential leading customer of the CFP2 chooses to use its own design.
"The CFP2 has been a bit slow - the MSA has taken longer than people expected - so Cisco announcing CPAK has frightened a few people"
Paul Brooks, JDSU
Industry analysts do not believe it undermines the CFP2 MSA. “I believe there is business for the CFP2,” says Daryl Inniss, practice leader, Ovum Components. “Cisco is shooting for a solution that has some staying power. The CFP2 is too large and the power consumption too high while the CFP4 is too small and will take too long to get to market; CPAK is a great compromise.”
That said, Inniss, in a recent opinion piece entitled: Optical integration challenges component/OEM ecosystem, writes:
“Cisco’s Lightwire acquisition provides another potential attack on the traditional ecosystem. Lightwire provides unique silicon photonics based technology that can support low power consumption and high-density modules. Cisco may adopt a proprietary transceiver strategy to lower cost, decrease time to market, and build competitive barriers. It need not go through the standards process, which would enable its competitors and provide them with its technology. Cisco only needs to convince its customers that it has a robust supply chain and that it can support its product.”
Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of market research firm, LightCounting, is not surprised by the development. “Cisco could use more proprietary parts and technologies to compete with Huawei over the next decade,” he says. “From a transceiver vendor perspective, custom-made products are often more profitable than standard ones; unless Cisco will make everything in house, which is unlikely, it is not bad news.”
JDSU has just announced that its ONT-100G test set supports the CFP2 and CFP4. The equipment will also support CPAK. "We have designed a range of adaptors that allows us to interface to other optics including one very large equipment vendor's - Cisco's - own CFP2-like form factor," says Brooks.
However, Brooks still expects the industry to align on a small number of MSAs despite the advent of CPAK. "The majority view is that the CFP2 and CFP4 will address most people's needs," says Brooks. "Although there is some debate whether a QSFP2 may be more cost effective than the CFP4." The QSFP2 is the next-generation compact follow-on to the QSFP that supports the 4x25Gbps electrical interface.
60-second interview with .... Sterling Perrin
Heavy Reading has published a report Photonic Integration, Super Channels & the March to Terabit Networks. In this 60-second interview, Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at the market research company, talks about the report's findings and the technology's importance for telecom and datacom.
"PICs will be an important part of an ensemble cast, but will not have the starring role. Some may dismiss PICs for this reason, but that would be a mistake – we still need them."
Sterling Perrin, Heavy Reading
Heavy Reading's previous report on optical integration was published in 2008. What has changed?
The biggest change has been the rise of coherent detection, bringing electronics to prominence in the world of optics. This is a big shift - and it has taken some of the burden off photonic integration. Simply put, electronics has taken some of the job away from optics.
How important is optical Integration, for optical component players and for system vendors?
Until now, photonic integration has not been a ‘must have’ item for systems suppliers. For the most part, there have been other ways to get at lower costs and footprint reductions.
I think we are starting to see photonic integration move into the must-have category for systems suppliers, in certain applications, which means that it becomes a must-have item for the components companies that supply them.
How should one view silicon photonics and what importance does Heavy Reading attach to Cisco System's acquisition of silicon photonics' startup, Lightwire?
When we published the last [2008] report, silicon photonics was definitely within the hype cycle. We’ve seen the hype fade quite a bit – it’s now understood that just because a component is made with silicon, it’s not automatically going to be cheaper. Also, few in the industry continue to talk about a Moore’s Law for optics today. That said, there are applications for silicon photonics, particularly in data centre and short-reach applications, and the technology has moved forward.
Cisco’s acquisition of Lightwire is a good testament for how far the technology has come. This is a strategic acquisition, aimed at long-term differentiation, and Cisco believes that silicon photonics will help them get there.
"It will be interesting to watch what other [optical integration] M&A activity occurs, and how this activity affects the components players"
What are the main optical integration market opportunities?
In long haul, we already see applications for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Certainly, Infinera’s PIC-based DTN and DTN-X systems stand out. But also, the OIF has specified photonic integration in its 100 Gigabit long haul, DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) MSA (multi-source agreement) – it was needed to get the necessary size reduction.
Moving forward, there is opportunity for PICs in client-side modules as PICs are the best way to reduce module sizes and improve system density. Then, beyond 100G, to super-channel-based long-haul systems, PICs will play a big role here, as parallel photonic integration will be used to build these super-channels.
Were you surprised by any of the report's findings?
When I start researching a report, I am always hopefully for big black and white kinds of findings – this is the biggest thing for the industry or this is a dud. With photonic integration, we found such a wide array of opinions and viewpoints that, in the end, we had to place photonic integration somewhere in the middle.
It’s clear that system vendors are going to need PICs but it’s also clear that PICs alone won’t solve all the industry’s challenges. PICs will be an important part of an ensemble cast, but will not have the starring role. Some may dismiss PICs for this reason, but that would be a mistake – we still need them.
What optical integration trends/ developments should be watched over the next two years?
The year started with two major system suppliers buying PIC companies: Cisco and Lightwire and Huawei and CIP Technologies. With Alcatel-Lucent having in-house abilities, and, of course, Infinera, this should put pressure on other optical suppliers to have a PIC strategy.
It will be interesting to watch what other M&A activity occurs, and how this activity affects the components players.
The editor of Gazettabyte worked with Heavy Reading in researching photonic integration for the report.
LightReading Market Spotlight: ROADMs
Click here for the market spotlight ROADM article written for LightReading. See also the comment discussions.