EPON

"Feedback we are getting from customers is that the current 100 Gig LR4 modules are too expensive"

Rafik Ward, Finisar

Q: Broadway Networks, why has Finisar acquired the company?

A: We spent quite some time talking to Broadway and understanding their business. We also talked to Broadway’s customers and the feedback we got on the technical team, the products and what this little start-up was able to accomplish was unanimously very positive.

We think what Broadway has done, for instance their EPON* stick product, is very interesting. With that product, an end user has the ability to make any SFP* port on a low-end Ethernet switch an EPON ONU*  interface. This opens up a whole new set of potential customers and end users for EPON. 

In reality, consumers will never have Ethernet switches with SFP ports in their house. Where we do see such Ethernet switches are in every major enterprise and many multi-dwelling units. It is an interesting technology that enables enterprises and multi-dwelling units to quickly tool-up for EPON.

* [EPON - Ethernet passive optical network, SFP - small form-factor pluggable optical transceiver, ONU - optical network unit]

Optical transceivers have been getting smaller and faster in the last decade yet laser and photo-detector manufacturing have hardly changed, except in terms of speed. Is this about to change?

Speed is one of the focus areas for the industry and will continue to be. Looking forward in a number of applications, though, we are going to hit the limit for these lasers and we are going to have to look more carefully outside of just raw laser speed to move up the data rate curve.

"We are going to hit the limit for these lasers"

A lot of this work has already started on the line side using different modulation formats and DSP* technology. Over time the question is: What happens on the client side? In future, do we look to other modulation formats on the client side? Eventually we will get there; it may take several years before we need to do things like that. But as an industry we would be foolish to think we won’t have to do this.

WDM* is going to be an increasingly important technology on the client side. We are already seeing this with the 40GBASE-LR4 and 100GBASE-LR4 standards.

* [DSP - digital signal processing, WDM - wavelength-division multiplexing]

Google gave a presentation at ECOC that argued for the need for another 100Gbps interface. What is Finisar’s view? 

Feedback we are getting from customers is that the current 100 Gig LR4 modules are too expensive. We have spent a lot of time with customers helping them understand how the current LR4 standard, as is written, actually enables a very low cost optical interface, and the timeframes we believe are very quick in terms of how we can get cost down considerably on 100 Gig.  Rafik Ward (right) giving Glenn Wellbrock, director of backbone network design at Verizon Business, a tour of Finisar's labsThat was part of the details that [Finisar’s] Chris Cole also presented at ECOC.

There has certainly been a lot of media attention on the two [ECOC] presentations between Finisar and Google. This really is not so much about the quote, ‘drama’, or two companies that have a disagreement which optical interface makes more sense. It is more fundamental than that.

What it comes down to is that, as an industry, we have pretty limited resources. The best thing all of us can do is try to direct these resources – this limited pool we have combined throughout the industry - on a path that makes the most sense to reduce bandwidth cost most significantly.

The best way to do that, and that is already established, is through standards. The [IEEE] standard got it right that the path the industry is on is going to enable the lowest cost 100 Gig [interface]. Like everything, there is some investment required to get us there. The 25 Gig technology now [used as 4x25 Gig] is becoming mainstream and will soon enable the lowest cost solution. My view is that within 18 months to two years this will be a moot point.

If the technology was available 18 months sooner, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. But that is the position that we, as an industry, are in. With that, it creates some tensions, some turmoil, where customers don’t like to pay more than they perceive they have to.

There is the CFP form factor that is relatively large. Is the point that if current technology was available 18 months ago, 100Gbps could have come out in a QSFP?

The heart of the debate is cost.

There are other elements that always play into a debate like this. Beyond the cost argument, how quickly can two optical interfaces, like a 4x25 Gig versus a 10x10 Gig, each enable a smaller form factor solution.

But I think that is secondary. Had we not had the cost problem that we have now between 4x25 Gig versus 10x10 Gig, I don’t think we would be talking about it.

So it’s the current cost of the 4x25 Gig that is the issue?

Correct.

In September, the ECOC conference and exhibition was held. What were your impressions and did you detect any interesting changes?

There wasn’t so much an overwhelming theme this year at ECOC. In ECOC 2009, it was the year of coherent detection. This year there wasn’t a theme that resonated strongly throughout.

The mood was relatively upbeat. From our perspective, ECOC seemed a little bit smaller in terms of the size of the floor. But all the key people you would expect to be at the show were there.

Maybe the strongest theme – and I wrote about this in my blog – was colourless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) [ROADMs]. I think what I said is that they should have renamed it not ECOC but the ECDC show.

"A blog ... enables a much more informal mechanism to communicate to a broad audience."

Do you read business books and is there one that is useful for your job?

Probably the book I think about the most in my job is Clayton Christensen's The Innovator’s Dilemma.

He talks about how, when you look at very successful technology companies that have failed, what causes them to fail is often new solutions that come from the very low end of the market.

A lot of companies, and he cites examples from the disk drive industry, prided themselves on focussing on the high end of the market but ultimately ended up failing because there was a surprise upstart, someone who came in at the market's low end – in terms of performance, cost etc. – that continued to innovate using their low-end architecture, making it suitable for the core market.

For these large, well-established companies, once they realised they had this competitor, it was too late. 

I think about that business book probably more than others. It’s a very interesting take on technology and the threat that can be posed to people in high-tech companies.

Your job sounds intensive and demanding. What do you do outside work to relax?

I’m a big [ice] hockey fan. I’ve been a hockey fan for many years; it’s a pretty intense sport. These days I tend to watch more hockey than I play but I very much enjoy the sport.

The other thing I started up this year that I had never done before – a little side project – was vegetable gardening. Surprisingly, it ended up taking a lot of my attention and I think it was a good distraction for me.

It can be quite remarkable, when you have your own little vegetable garden, how often you go and look at its progress. I’d find often coming home from work, first thing I’d want to do is go see how things were progressing in my vegetable garden.

You are the face of Finisar’s blog. What have you learnt from the experience?

A blog is an interesting tool to get information out to a broad audience. For companies like Finisar, it serves as a very important communication vehicle that didn’t exist previously.

In the old days, if you wanted to get information out to a broad group of customers, you either had to meet and communicate that information face-to-face, or via email; very targeted, one customer-at-a-time communication.

Another way was the press release. A press release was a very easy way to broadcast that information. But the challenge is that not all information that you want to broadcast is suitable for a press release.

The reason why I really like the blog is that it enables a much more informal mechanism to communicate to a broad audience.

Has it helped your job in any tangible way?

We found some interesting customer opportunities. These have come in through the blog when we’ve talked about specific products. That hasn’t happened extremely frequently but we have had a few instances. So it’s probably the most tangible thing: we can point to enhanced business because of it.

But the strength of something like a blog goes much deeper than that, in terms of the communication vehicle it enables.

You have about a year’s experience running a blog. If an optical component company is thinking about starting a blog, what is your advice?

The best advice I can give to anybody looking to do a blog is that it is something you have to commit to up-front.

A blog where you don’t continue to refresh the content regularly becomes a tired blog very quickly.  We have made a conscious effort to have updated postings as best we can, on a weekly basis or even more frequently. There are certainly periods where we have gone longer than that but if you look back, in general, we have a wide variety of content that has been refreshed regularly.

I have to give credit to others - guest bloggers - within the organisation that help to maintain the content. This is critical. I would struggle to keep up with the pace if it was just myself every week.

Click here for the first part of Rafik Ward's Q&A.