Spring 2019 Optical Connections Magazine

CONTENTS

4 9

Industry News

Ellen Manning Keeping it Tidy

With the massive growth in capacity, driven by the rise of international datacentres, streaming video and ultimately 5G and IoT, sub-sea networks are becoming more important than ever. In this issue, Matthew Peach looks at how long-haul technologies are evolving to meet these growing needs. In a similar vein, Ciena’s Brian Lavallée talks to Optical Connections about how technologies developed for terrestrial networks, such as coherent networking, are finding their way into sub-sea domain. Long-haul is not the whole story however, there is the almost no-man’s land of middle-distance transport. Lightwave Logic’s Karen Liu explains that there is a technology gap opening up in mid-range optics that reach beyond 10km and up to around 100km. But distance is not everything. Speed is an issue that is currently applying pressure on sharpest minds in the industry. Antony Savvas reflects on the fact that we’ve had the widescale roll-out of commercial 200G and the bedding down of the first 400G deployments, and asks what comes next in the speed jigsaw, how will it be introduced and what is driving it? Then there’s the issue of transmission technologies. Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) has become both a mainstay and a fast-growing element of high capacity optical networking, and John Williamson looks at the latest developments and the obvious attractions of getting more bandwidth out of existing fibre with Coarse WDM (CWDM) and Dense WDM (DWDM). Of course, there’s more to fibre networks than the heavy lifting of optical transport. For instance, where all those optical fibres come together, there’s potential for confusion. Ellen Manning looks at how the massive demand for new fibre connections has created a large number of bottlenecks right across the physical network layer and examines how enabling access to individual connectors and reliability are among the issues driving manufacturers to develop innovative solutions for physical connectivity. In addition, there’s the problem of getting fibre into customer’s premises, and in particular multiple dwelling units (MDUs). Rolling out FTTH is rarely a simple job and the difficulties multiply when providing service to individual households in apartment blocks. Given the number of such multiple dwelling units in Europe alone, it is clear that a ubiquitous solution is required. Jamie McGee, MDU product specialist at Emtelle looks at the difficulties and possible solutions. Looking at networks as a whole, Precision OT’s CTO Chris Page, explains how the widening number of use cases for SDN is paving the way for the rise of open standards, open source software and open source-design products to diminish vendor-lock and accelerate deployments. So, in this first issue of the new year, there is plenty to think about and discuss. We hope you find it interesting and we look forward to discussing these issues at the up- coming industry events. FIBRE NETWORKS IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL

12 Peter Dykes

FTTH in Europe

14 Brian Lavallée

On Land and Sea

16 Antony Savvas Beyond 400G 18 Matthew Peach

Going the Distance

22 Chris Page

SDN Comes to

Access Networks

24 John Williamson Riding the Wave 26 Karen Liu Stuck in the Middle 30 Jamie McGee

Fibre to the Apartment

32 Peter Dykes

FTTH Conference Preview

34 Peter Dykes OFC Preview 36 Event Focus 39 Product Focus

Peter Dykes Contributing Editor, Optical Connections

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ISSUE 16 | Q1 2019

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