Juniper Networks opens up the optical line system

Juniper Networks has responded to the demands of the large-scale data centre players with an open optical line system architecture.

Donyel Jones-WilliamsThe system vendor has created software external to its switch, IP router and optical transport platforms that centrally controls the optical layer.

Juniper has also announced a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) - the TCX1000 - that is Lumentum’s own white box ROADM design. Juniper will offer the Lumentum white box as its own, part of its optical product portfolio.

The open line system architecture, including the TCX1000, is also being pitched to communications service providers that want an optical line system and prefer to deal with a single vendor.

“Juniper plans to address the optical layer with a combination of software and open hardware in the common optical layer,” says Andrew Schmitt, founder and lead analyst at Cignal AI. “This is the solution it will bring to customers rather than partnering with an optical vendor, which Juniper has tried several times without great success.”

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Infinera unveils first platforms using its latest PIC & DSP

• The Cloud Xpress 2 platform for data centre interconnects packs 1.2 terabits in a 1 rack unit (1RU) box.  
• Infinera has also unveiled two DTN-X XT 'meshponder' platforms that aggregate client signals and offer sliceable transponder functionality that delivers wavelengths to multiple destinations. 
• The company also announced an open flexible grid line system that supports the C and L bands 
• Three of the top four US internet content providers are Infinera customers.

Infinera has started to unveil its platform portfolio based on its Infinite Capacity Engine that combines the company's latest-generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and coherent DSP-ASIC technology.

Geoff Bennett

The first platform using the technology is the Cloud Xpress 2, Infinera second-generation data centre interconnect platform, was unveiled in September. More recently, it has added two DTN-X meshponder platforms - the XT-3300 and the XT-3600 - as well as upgrading two of its existing DTN-X platforms.

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ST makes its first PSM4 optical engine deliveries

Flavio Benetti is upbeat about the prospects of silicon photonics. “Silicon photonics as a market is at a turning point this year,” he says.

What gives Benetti confidence is the demand he is seeing for 100-gigabit transceivers in the data centre. “From my visibility today, the tipping point is 2016,” says Benetti, group vice president and general manager, digital and mixed processes ASIC division at STMicroelectronics.

Flavio Benetti

Benetti and colleagues at ST have spent the last four years working to bring to market the silicon photonics technology that the chip company licensed from Luxtera.

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The white box concept gets embraced at the optical layer

Lumentum has unveiled several optical white-box designs. To date the adoption of white boxes - pizza-box sized platforms used in large-scale data centres - has been at the electronic layer, for switching and routing applications.

Brandon Collings

White boxes have arisen to satisfy the data centre operators’ need for simple building-block functions in large number that they can direct themselves.  

“They [data centre operators] started using very simple white boxes - rather simple functionality, much simpler than the large router companies were providing - which they controlled themselves using software-defined networking orchestrators,” says Brandon Collings, CTO of Lumentum. 

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