Jun 17 2015
CALIENT Technologies, Inc., the global leader for optical circuit switching technology, today announced it will debut a new software-defined networking (SDN) transport interconnect network architecture at the Optinet China Conference in Beijing.
CALIENT is a silver sponsor of the event and will have its S-Series Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) family on display at its booth.
In addition, CALIENT’s Technical Director for Greater China, Hongliang Qu, will make a presentation on new network architectures that leverage the economic and operational advantages of OCS in data centers and SDN-controlled metro- and wide-area network transport fabrics.
SDN Transport Limited By Network Boundaries
The promise of SDN is that a global software controller can more efficiently route data through a network, optimizing multi-layer switching and avoiding congestion to deliver better throughput and network utilization.
But network segmentation created by equipment from different vendors and geographic domains serves to partition the network and dramatically reduce the benefits of SDN.
In his presentation, Qu will discuss how adding Optical Circuit Switching under SDN control at the network edges and between network domain boundaries eliminates the impact of these boundaries. Instead it provides flexible optical on-off ramps bridging multiple vendor networks and domains, and enabling operators to fully realize the benefits of SDN transport optimization.
The OCS deployed at the network edge allows any client side resource to be connected to any network resource. This supports network-wide SDN control of the optical layer whether a new or legacy network. Service providers and data center operators can then virtualize and control all of the disparate resources in their optical transport networks.
“We pioneered the use of SDN with Optical Circuit Switches and as we have worked with carriers we’ve seen that the gaps between vendor and domain boundaries are a real challenge to realizing the full value of the multi-layer optimization that SDN can deliver,” said Xiaopeng Zhang, General Manager, CALIENT Greater China. “In our internal research with carriers, we’ve seen estimates of 30 percent to 50 percent savings potential in network capex on core router investments. We’re excited for the opportunity to discuss this concept at Optinet.”
CALIENT S-Series
CALIENT’s S-Series includes the S320, 320-port Optical Circuit Switch, and the S-160, 160-port Optical Circuit Switch. The switches allow any-to-any network connections with almost no latency and can be reconfigured on demand through network management or SDN controllers.