Toward Terabit Ethernet
Abstract: At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1978, I helped build a 150 Mbps optical Ethernet, which was amazing given that transcontinental links of the Internet core then ran at 50 Kbps. In 2008, 30 years later, I want to talk not just about how we got to 10 Gbps Ethernet (10GbE), but also about how we are going to get to 40, 100, and, yes, even 1,000 Gbps Ethernet, which I hereby call Terabit Ethernet (TbE).
A few years after we deploy 40GbE (maybe) and then 100GbE, we are going to need TbE to carry rapidly increasing traffic on the new mobile, video, and embedded Internet. Mobile just passed a billion new cellphones per year. Video is becoming the dominant traffic on the Internet, and that's before high definition (HD) and mobile video come fully online. And then there are totally new sources of traffic, like from the 10 billion embedded micro-controllers now shipped every year, a tiny but increasing faction of which is now being mesh networked with ZigBee/802.15.4.
The Internet is expanding at rates unimaginable even 10 years ago, and with new applications and traffic characteristics not envisioned at the start. I will walk through a roadmap to TbE, factoring in traffic drivers and volumes, key issues and tradeoffs, and the relative roles of packet and high-bandwidth optical circuit transport and switching. For example, will TbE simply hasten the routing of today's Internet Protocol (IP) packets, or will some form of lambda switching be needed to carry time-critical volume flows?
Biography: Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe: MIT engineer, Harvard mathematician, Internet developer, Xerox scientist, Ethernet inventor, Stanford professor, 3Com founder, Cambridge fellow, InfoWorld pundit, and now Polaris partner.
In 2005, Metcalfe received the National Medal of Technology for leadership in the invention (1973), standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet, of which a quarter billion switch ports ship each year. Metcalfe has been a General Partner of Polaris Venture Partners since January 1, 2001, and served or serves as a director of Polaris-backed start-ups including Ember, GreenFuel, Infinite Power Solutions, InvisibleHand, Mintera, Nanosys, Paratek, PhyFlex, and SiCortex. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Inventors Hall of Fame, and board of trustees of MIT, where he is a director of Technology Review magazine and Chairman of the Leadership Board of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He was awarded the ACM's Hopper, IEEE's Bell and Marconi Prizes, and the IEEE Medal of Honor. He wrote Internet Collapses, still available at Amazon.com. He devised Metcalfe's Law, which he has been defending for over 25 years. After 22 years in Silicon Valley, Metcalfe now lives with his family in Boston and Maine. |
Perspectives on Optical Communications
Abstract: Nearly one terameter (1000 million kilometers) of optical fiber are now deployed around the globe, providing a high-capacity network infrastructure for the world’s now dominant data traffic continuing to double its volume every year. The customers of this fiber network include the over one billion internet users who continue in their demands for newer and broader bandwidth services. In response, lightwave R&D has advanced the capacity of long-haul fiber transmission systems by a factor of 100 since the WDM revolution that started a little more than ten years ago, and continues to explore the increased networking flexibility of WDM.
There is strong technological progress in the technology of components and optical integrated circuitry that promises to further reduce networking cost and enable transmission and switching at higher data rates. Examples include monolithic transceivers that are widely tunable and operate at 40 Gb/s rates, optically integrated wavelength selective switches enabling multi-degree mesh- ROADMs, and field-tested PICS with 10 WDM channels operating at 10 Gb/s each. There are also highly promising advances in the use of sophisticated modulation formats such as multi-level PSK in conjunction with receiver-side digital signal processing. System research experiments using polarization-multiplexed DQPSK have demonstrated long-haul transmission at a record capacity of 25 Terabits/sec per fiber, and are exploring the cost-effective transmission of 10 WDM channels each carrying 100 GbEthernet traffic.
In the market we note the strong resurgence of construction of undersea fiber systems in the Pacific, and the large-scale deployment of fiber to the premise, FTTP, now reaching millions of users and providing the potential for broadband services such as GbEthernet to the home and business.
Biography: Austrian-born Herwig Kogelnik received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-techn. degrees from the Technical University (TU) Vienna in 1955 and 1958, and the D. phil. degree from Oxford University, England, in 1960.
From 1955 to 1958 he was Assistant Professor at the TU, engaged in microwave research and teaching. He won a British Council Scholarship to Oxford from 1958 to 1960, where he did research on electromagnetic radiation in magnetoplasmas and anisotropic media. He joined Bell Labs (earlier owned by AT&T, currently by Alcatel-Lucent) in 1961, where he conducted research in optics, electronics and communications, including work on lasers, holography, optical guided-wave devices and integrated optics. He was head of the Coherent Optics Research Department from 1967 to 1976, director of the Electronics Research Laboratory from 1976 to 1983, and director of the Photonics Research Laboratory from 1983 to 1997. He is presently Adjunct Photonics Research VP.
Kogelnik is a Fellow of the IEEE and of OSA and was recently awarded the 2006 National Medal of Technology. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 and to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1994, and served as chairman of the Engineering Sciences section of the NAS from 1999 to 2002. He is the recipient of the 1984 Frederic Ives Medal of OSA, the 1989 David Sarnoff Award of the IEEE, the 1990 Joseph Johann Ritter von Prechtl Medal from the TU Vienna, Austria, and the 1991 Quantum Electronics Award from IEEE LEOS. He served as President of OSA in 1989. He was elected Honorary Fellow of St. Peter's College at Oxford University in 1992, is the recipient of the 2001 IEEE Medal of Honor, received the 2001 Marconi International Fellowship Award in Telecommunications, and was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2006 Kogelnik was awarded the "Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst 1. Klasse” by the President of Austria, was named Honorary Member of OSA, and was awarded the Okawa Prize by the Okawa Foundation of Information and Telecommunications.
Kogelnik served as Program Chair and Chair of the IEEE/OSA conferences on Laser Applications and Engineering (CLEA), Integrated Optics, and the International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC). |
Evolving Carrier Networks to Cost-Effectively Manage Proliferating Traffic Growth
Abstract:Network traffic grows at an ever-increasing rate and carriers cannot assume vendors and other carriers will effectively keep pace with the increasing demands. It is a challenge the industry faces as a whole and carriers and vendor partners will need to find innovative ways to increase network capacity and improve network efficiency while driving costs down so end users can continue to benefit from current and emerging services without dramatic increases in cost. Dr. Poll will discuss potential strategies and the outlook for managing the increasing network requirements in order to economically deliver the services customers want today and in the future.
Biography: Pieter Poll is the Chief Technology Officer at Qwest. He is responsible for the strategic technological direction of the company. In this role, he oversees the evolution of the network and technologies utilized to manage the various network layers and drive future product and service capabilities. Additionally, he is responsible for network planning and engineering functions.
Dr. Poll has spent more than 20 years in the telecommunications industry. Previously, he served as Vice President – Corporate Strategy for Mahi Networks where he was responsible for corporate technology and product strategy, business partnership development and business development.
Prior to his role at Mahi Networks, Dr. Poll held a variety of leadership positions at Qwest, including those of Vice President – Worldwide Technology Management, Vice President – Worldwide Emerging Technologies, and General Manager – Network Architecture and Strategy. Before that time, he played an integral role at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the development of architectural and evolutionary plans for digital switches and the AT&T long-distance network.
Dr. Poll graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mathematics. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics at Cornell University.
Dr. Poll currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Center for Telecom Management at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. He participates on the Advisory Board for the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado – Boulder and the Metro Denver Wired Initiative.
Dr. Poll, his wife, Christine, and son, Alastair, reside in the Denver area. |