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Author Archives: Jim Theodoras
What’s That Buzz?
With OFC/NFOEC just around the corner, I thought it might be fun to guess at what the big news might be on the show floor. While predicting buzz can be a hazardous endeavor, the steady ramp up in press releases leading up to the big event, plus the program guide give pretty good hints.
Big again this year appears to be coherent detection, though not necessarily for the same reasons as last year. Coherent was a buzz word at last year’s OFC/NFOEC, primarily because it enabled 100GE transmission, and neither was quite ready for primetime yet. Fast forward a year, and now coherent is once again in the limelight, but not just because of 100GE. Over the last year, creative people have started to realize what the extra link budget means to system architecture. More recently, they have realized that the digital filter that allows recovery of the PM-QPSK signal also can be used for other digital filtering purposes. Consider 2500km with no dispersion compensation whatsoever, and how it would change the network landscape.
Is net neutrality even realistic?
Image via Wikipedia
The NY Times has a great op-ed on “Net Neutrality” this week, which got me thinking… Is the expectation of total and complete internet neutrality realistic and do we even understand what that might entail?
First, let’s look at what net neutrality might actually be defined as. Strangely, when discussing net neutrality, often examples of net non-neutrality are cited. These are typically cases where Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) have blocked various applications or throttled the heavy bandwidth consumption from heavy users. From my point of view, net neutrality is not just an ISP issue, concerning what they will allow or not allow, but a Carrier Ethernet issue as well. A packet typically travels across dozens of networks owned by different companies from source to destination. Any one of these networks could decide to impede, limit, or throttle the packet depending upon a wide range of attributes, including where it originated from, the type of packet, the host application, etc. On one hand, if every carrier in the world decided to start doing as it pleased with any packets traversing its network, the internet would cease to function as we know it today. On the other hand, faced with a deluge of packets, carriers are being forced to at least set some guidelines, limits, and rules.
Low-latency networking for Financials
I just returned from 3 back-to-back financial trading conferences in New York City, with a refreshed perspective on the state of low-latency networking of financial institutions.
The field of low-latency networking for financial players continues to evolve and innovate at a relentless pace. Just a little over a year ago, trades were won or lost by milliseconds. By the end of the year, that was shaved to microseconds. At the conferences, I was told that today 250ns can make the difference between winning and losing a trade. Times have changed, indeed.
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What to REALLY look for at OFC/NFOEC this year
As OFC/NFOEC approaches once again, I find myself reflecting upon the state of optical communications. Certainly, there is much to be enthusiastic about. The never-ending bandwidth explosion shows no signs of slowing, thus creating widespread demand across all optical industries, from 100GE for the core, pluggable optics for interconnect, and PON components for FTTx, to name just a few. And there is no better place than OFC/NFOEC to get a read on the status of these important optical technologies. While I would be foolish to make any predictions here, given the unpredictable nature of technology, there are certainly things I will be looking for in technical sessions, on the showfloor, and even in poster sessions.
Brainstorming on Next Generation Ethernet Data Centers
I’m currently in Santa Clara, CA, at the Next Generation Ethernet Data Center -Technology Exploration Forum (TEF), being hosted by the Ethernet Alliance. There has been a lot of attention on Data Centers over the last few years, with most of the emphasis on power and cooling, though more recently protocol convergence is increasingly the topic of conversation. Growth trends continue to be worrying, leading to the need for strategic planning. Building the mega-Data Centers of today have been a “learn as you grow” process, with little time for planning ahead. TEF’s are a great way of pausing to reflect on the subject matter. Today we are openly discussing where we are at on the growth curve, what has gone well and not so well, surprise lessons learned, and how to meet future demand. Sessions include Higher Speed Ethernet, IO Virtualization, Unprecedented Growth, Low Latency Ethernet, Cloud Computing, Convergence, and End Users.
