How Infinera is Advancing U.S. Competitiveness Through Integrated Photonics

By Margo Westfall

Sr. Manager, Corporate Marketing

As part of the National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) initiative, Vice President Joe Biden, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and Undersecretary of Defense Frank Kendall announced the Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Integrated Photonics (MII-IP) Innovation Hub in Rochester, New York.

In a related press release, the White House and the Department of Defense announced that the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded $110 million to the Integrated Photonics Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IP-IMI). Subsequent to the announcement, the name of the MII-IP and IP-IMI initiatives were changed to the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics) to create consistent naming among all government agencies.

The total investment of $610 million — the $110 million from federal funds and more than $500 million in private sector contributions — represents the largest public-private commitment to date for a manufacturing institute launched in the United States.  AIM’s Integrated Photonics Institute is designed to establish a technology, business and education framework for industry, government and academia to accelerate the transition of integrated photonics solutions from technology prototypes to manufacturing-ready deployment in systems spanning multiple commercial and defense applications.

AIM Photonics is focused on developing an end-to-end photonics ecosystem in the U.S. and is part of the NNMI’s public-private partnership model to boost advanced manufacturing, foster American innovation, and attract and create jobs that strengthen the middle class.

What is less known by some is the important role Infinera has played in the initiative.  Infinera was integral in the development of the integrated photonics institute concept.  Actively involved in the initiative from its inception, Infinera played a key role compelling the decision by NNMI to approve an institute for integrated photonics and, thereafter, actively participating in the AIM Photonics bid preparation. Infinera will continue to support the initiative by leveraging its industry-leading capabilities in indium phosphide and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) ecosystem (packaging, electronics and controls) to contribute and extend the capabilities of integrated photonics.

During the announcement, Infinera’s Fred Kish, Sr. Vice President of the Optical Integrated Circuit Group, met with Vice President Joe Biden.

Infinera’s Fred Kish and Vice President Joe Biden at the Announcement of the Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Integrated Photonics Innovation Hub in Rochester, New York.

Bringing Hope and Joy To Those In Need This Holiday Season

By Lisa Cianciarulo

Corporate Paralegal

Infinera recently participated in the Family Giving Tree’s 2016 Holiday Wish Drive, one of the many community service projects coordinated by the Infinera Community Fund.

Since 2013, Infinera’s Sunnyvale-based employees have participated in this gift drive, fulfilling the wishes of local children and adults in need. This year, Infinera employees again rallied to support those less fortunate, donating 170 gifts. In doing so, Infinera employees set yet another year-over-year record for gifts donated to this cause.

Transforming the Intelligent Transport Network to Cloud Scale

By Pravin Mahajan, Director of Product Marketing

The telecom industry continues to undergo significant transformation, with another year of rapid change in 2016. We saw multiple service provider mergers and acquisitions, while new services and technologies emerged – 5G, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and more. Amidst these changes, some fundamental trends continue—bandwidth demand keeps increasing and cost pressure remains high. Network operators are responding to these changes by streamlining their infrastructures to the simple Layer C (cloud services) and Layer T (intelligent transport) model, virtualizing as many network functions as possible in Layer C by taking advantage of nearly unlimited low-cost compute available in data centers worldwide to move to a simpler and more scalable Layer T optical network for moving bits between data source and sink.

As this generational shift in network architecture evolves, we are witnessing a striking change in Layer T traffic patterns. For example, on trans-Atlantic links, private traffic, mainly between data centers, is growing at more than double the rate of overall public internet traffic. This web scale private traffic requirement is typically at rates of N x 100 Gb/s, often characterized as “elephant flows,” and results in more linear traffic patterns. The network infrastructure serving this demand needs to be cost-optimized for this sort of traffic pattern, and takes its cues from web scale infrastructure used by internet content providers – it needs to be scalable, disaggregated and open.

Meanwhile, the public internet user-to-data center traffic requirement is more mesh-oriented, consisting of a multitude of “mice flows” that connect to and from businesses, cell towers, Wi-Fi hot spots and broadband internet connections.

Guest Blog: Enabling an Ecosystem of Open Networks for DCI and Metro Edge WDM Transport

By Brandon Collings

CTO, Lumentum

Bandwidth demands continue to grow exponentially. Our customers, and their end-customers, consistently report the need to accelerate innovation cycles and reduce costs across targeted parts of their network infrastructures. One approach is to leverage open white box systems to drive further innovation and cost reductions. Over the past few years, hyperscale data center operators have applied this approach to the switching fabric inside their data centers, enabling the construction of switches with simpler feature sets designed for their data center network performance, scaling, cost, and power requirements.

A similar approach is now underway for optical transport; however, as one moves lower down the layers, the functions transition from digital to analog.

The Entertainment Factor: Driving Bandwidth Demand by Orders of Magnitude

By Geoff Bennett

Director of Solutions and Technology

It is enlightening to consider how entertainment services have driven — and continue to drive — demand for higher data rates.

The first digital telephony service needed 56 or 64 kilobits per second (kb/s) of bandwidth, which is about the same data rate used by the earliest music streaming services. For comparison, let’s define that as a factor of 1.

A typical MP3 file is encoded at a 128 kb/s data rate, or a factor of 2. High-quality MP3 at 320 kb/s, is a factor of 5. So while the quantity of audio streaming and high-definition voice services might still drive growth in bandwidth demand, the quality won’t.

Advancements in video quality, by comparison, have really only just begun. Early internet video needed to be massively compressed to work with the dial-up services that were common at the time.

Standard-definition TV streaming at 480 pixels (480p) consumes 640 kb/s, or a factor of 10. But users soon began to demand better quality with high-definition television (HDTV), which requires 5 megabits per second (Mb/s), or a factor of 80. But this is only 720p, so there’s more to come.

Since the early days of the internet, the quality of the user experience for video has been limited by the speed of the network delivering it. In an apparent prediction of future broadband network requirements, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is suggesting that 25 Mb/s should be the national aspiration, which equates to a factor of 400. So does that data rate ensure that future services will deliver a high-quality user experience that won’t be limited by the network speed?

Third Network Lifecycle Service Orchestration in Action at MEF16

By Mark Showalter

Sr. Director SDN Product Marketing, Sr. Director Corporate Marketing

Infinera will demonstrate the Xceed Software Suite, an open, software-defined networking (SDN) solution for network operators deploying programmable optical transport networks, at the MEF16 Proof of Concept Showcase  in Baltimore November 7-9. The demonstration includes MEF-compliant Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) and on-demand Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE2.0) service creation using MEF 55 LSO application programming interfaces (APIs) to control next-generation SDN-enabled packet-optical networks using the Xceed Software Suite.

As the digital economy drives enterprises to adopt cloud-based architectures, they are pushing network service providers to rapidly deliver new services that connect businesses and consumers around the world.

Infinera and Lumentum Present on Open Line System at Facebook’s TIP Summit; Support Voyager Program

By Mike Capuano

Vice President, Marketing

At this point it has almost become an immutable law – that new applications will arise to consume bandwidth as fast as it can be delivered. More and more of those applications and the associated traffic exists inside and between the data centers of the large internet content providers (ICPs).  Not only does this rapid bandwidth growth result in significant network investments, it exposes scaling and manageability challenges at both ICPs and service providers alike. At Infinera, our goal is to help our customers build, operate and grow these networks as smoothly and as cost-efficiently as possible.

Infinera pioneered the small-form-factor server-like dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) appliance with the Cloud Xpress, recently introduced the Cloud Xpress 2 and is a clear leader in building DWDM systems that deliver scale-out network architectures. With these credentials, it is no surprise that Infinera has played an active role in Facebook’s Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP). Given Infinera’s participation at TIP is multi-faceted, in this blog I am focusing on two important areas as we participate in the TIP Summit on November 1 and 2 at Facebook’s campus in Silicon Valley.

First, Infinera and Lumentum are jointly presenting to the Open Line System (OLS) Working Group on what we see as the key attributes of an OLS, areas of required industry collaboration and the essential open questions that need to be answered.

Six Ways to Learn About Open SDN – Deployments and Solutions

By Mark Showalter

SDN Product Marketing, Sr. Director Corporate Marketing

Network planners across the globe are rethinking network architectures to accommodate the shift to software-defined networks (SDN).  IHS Markit surveyed network operators worldwide and published the findings in their Carrier SDN Strategies Global Service Provider Survey in August 2016. One of the key takeaways is that 89% of global service providers are planning to deploy SDN by 2017.  The survey found the key drivers of the move to SDN are service agility and automation. At Infinera, we hear echoes of these themes every day as we talk with customers deploying Intelligent Transport Networks.

There are several approaches to developing SDN solutions.  One approach is to repackage proprietary network management software.  Another approach gaining broad momentum is the use of open software as the foundation for these deployments. It is clear to us that network operators prefer open software solutions to control network elements from multiple suppliers to enable new services for business and consumers.

Want to learn more? Here are six ways to learn about the latest open SDN deployments and solutions:

Better Together: How Infinera Is Enabling Our Global Partners Win More Deals

By Jeff Marinchak

Senior Director, Channel Sales

Infinera recently announced its new Partner Program, developed to provide our partners with the tools to win, while simplifying and accelerating the process of bringing innovative optical networking technology to market  in order to quickly meet (and exceed) end-user demands. Built upon the premise of efficiency through simplicity, the program offers channel partners an application-optimized portfolio spanning access, metro, long-haul and subsea networks, while improving our partners’ ability to build and grow their businesses. Simplicity includes a focus on the ease of doing business and providing partners with the right tools to effectively build their knowledge, promptly resolve customer challenges and efficiently expand their market presence to deliver an exceptional experience to their customers.

Partner Portal 2.0:  A key element of the program is the new Infinera Partner Portal, planned to be fully available to our channel partners in Q1 ’17. The program, through the portal, will provide our partners with leads, easy-to-find assets, and marketing and sales materials, while offering seamless navigation through Infinera’s other enablement functions, such as training and Marketing Development Fund (MDF) requests.

Over the past year, Infinera has conducted extensive research, evaluated half a dozen portal technology vendors and ultimately decided to choose a platform that was highly rated, and most importantly, gave us the ability to scale to meet the needs of our partners and their customers. This portal technology platform enables us to operate a state-of-the-art partner portal that makes it easier for Infinera and its global channel partners to do business together.

Benefits of the new portal include:

Seeding the Clouds: Advancing DCI Technology from Hyperscale to Enterprise and Back

By Jay Gill

Principal Manager, Cloud & SDN Marketing

With the launch of the Cloud Xpress 2, the second generation of Infinera’s market-leading Cloud Xpress Family of data center interconnect (DCI) products, we like to say we’ve raised the bar. The Cloud Xpress 2 is built with our most advanced optical technology, the Infinite Capacity Engine, and delivers incredible performance in a small package – 1.2 terabits per second (Tb/s) in one rack unit (1RU) – that also offers simplicity, efficiency and security. It’s a great fit for the largest DCI operators, the hyperscale cloud and internet content providers, whom we often refer to as ICPs.

But what about the rest of the DCI market? How does this new product apply to the much larger community of data center operators, who don’t yet need dense 100 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) data center interconnects over multi-terabit wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) links?