Guest Blog: Blazing Trails with Gigabit and Network Innovation in the Upper Midwest

By Jon Pederson

CTO, Midco

Midco makes every effort to stay on the leading edge. In fact, we continuously enhance and expand our services to serve our customer base, which includes 300,000 residential and business customers in 335 communities in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

We recently announced that we’ll be upgrading most of our residential systems with DOCSIS 3.1 by the end of 2017 to provide gigabit internet access speeds. With this upgrade, Midco Gig downloads will be 35 times the national average and five times faster than Midco Xstream® 200 – something we are pretty proud of.

On the business front, we recently acq

Why Infinera Xceed Breaks New Ground in Transport SDN

By Pravin Mahajan

Director Product Marketing

In 2009, Kate Greene, a technology writer based here in Silicon Valley, coined a new term to describe Stanford University’s OpenFlow project in an article that appeared in the MIT Technology Review. That term – software-defined networking (SDN) – was seen as tautological by some, with the state-of-the-art approach confirming the pre-existing separation of the forwarding and control planes. Today, SDN has evolved from a descriptor to an entirely new market category. There has been a lot of hype surrounding SDN and its ability to enable network operators of all types to simplify transport networks, reduce capital and operating costs, and quickly and easily deliver new, on-demand services.

Or so the story goes.

In fact, use cases such as network functions virtualization (NFV) service chaining are driving the first phase of SDN adoption within the data center domain. Central offices are being re-architected as data centers (CORD) and mobile operators are virtualizing their evolved packet core, also known as vEPC. At the other end of the network, the customer premise equipment (CPE) is also being virtualized. Network operators have, however, yet to deploy SDN widely across the packet-optical transport domain.

Why is this so? After all, Transport SDN controllers have been available for several years now, and the industry has made the network more programmable through open, standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs). On the demand side, service providers and enterprises increasingly require more dynamic bandwidth services, driven primarily by the adoption of cloud-based applications and content.

A big reason for the slow progress in Transport SDN lies in a simple truth about networks: any control plane is only as good as its underlying data plane. In today’s networks, service providers require frequent truck rolls and manual installation of line cards just to turn up additional wavelengths in the data plane. Even if an SDN controller is available to automate provisioning functions – determining when, where and how additional capacity should be activated – the network often lacks the ability to respond quickly. Another reason is the development approach vendors have chosen for their Transport SDN solutions, with element and network management systems being retrofitted for SDN control. Given these challenges it should come as no surprise that today’s Transport SDN offerings have not met customer requirements for openness and multi-layer control.

Until now.

How SANET Created a Different Kind of Network Backbone: A discussion between Marian Ďurkovič, SANET and Geoff Bennett, Infinera

Marian Ďurkovič is the network architect for the Slovak Republic’s National Education and Research Network, SANET.  Last year SANET selected Infinera during a public tender for a new network backbone, and Marian is now taking full advantage of the capabilities of the Infinera Cloud Xpress platform to create a new and highly cost-effective backbone architecture.  Here Geoff Bennett, Director of Solutions and Technology at Infinera, interviews Marian about this novel network architecture.

Geoff Bennett:  Marian, welcome to the Infinera Blog.  Just to set the scene perhaps I can summarize for our readers that SANET has recently deployed a national research and education transport network backbone across the Slovak Republic.  Here’s a diagram of that network, which has seventeen 100 gigabit per second (100G) point of presence (PoP) locations, and supports packet-based services for the academic and research community in the Slovak Republic. The reason that I wanted to talk to you about this network is that it uses a rather innovative combination of technologies, and I’d like to ask you to explain why it is so unique.

Network Diagram of SANET’s Recently-deployed National Research and Education Transport Network Backbone across the Slovak Republic

Marian Ďurkovič: Yes, I think it is really quite unique.  So what we did was to take a step back from a typical transport network architecture, which I think we can characterize as having dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), optical transport network (OTN) and packet layers, and ask how much of this traditional set of technologies do we really need.  After all, the distances for each hop are not very far, and we can define the set of services we support as packet-based.  So this avoids the need to support legacy time-division multiplexing (TDM) service types, and gives us the opportunity to optimize the functionality.

Geoff Bennett: Excellent – so what does this architecture actually look like?

Taking Time to Give Back

By Martin Gothberg

Senior Environmental Health & Safety Engineer

At Infinera we have fundamentally changed the way data is transmitted across optical networks with our industry-leading products and services. We are also committed to civic leadership and involvement that makes our local communities better and more resilient by providing volunteer opportunities to our employees throughout the year.

On a recent day in the Bay Area, the Infinera Community Fund and Infinera Green Team arranged for employees and summer interns to remove invasive plants so that native plants can retake a highly visible meadow at the entrance to historic McClellan Ranch Preserve in Cupertino. Together we cleared an area around a fenced-in “island” of recently planted natives, removing thistle, bunch grass and exotic mustard plants that tend to take over if left unchecked.

Pictured (not in any order): Michelle Clemente, Claire Mondry, Caroline Weidner, Kalyn Stockman, Nhu-Lan (Jacquelyn) Nguyen, Ryan Heinkel, James Fitts III, Girish Bharvirkar, Karla Roman, Prashanth Kota, Christine Voci-Nam, Krishna Sugumaran, Lydia Wiswell, Marlee Castleman, Louise Hwang and Martin Gothberg

Facebook’s Vision of Virtual Reality

By Geoff Bennett

Director of Solutions and Technology

As a confirmed technogeek, I was delighted when my recent purchase arrived this week – the Samsung Gear virtual reality (VR) headset, which uses the Oculus VR technology recently acquired by Facebook.

Samsung Gear VR Headset Worn by Blog Author Geoff Bennett

These headsets have really dropped in price recently, and part of the reason they’re such a good value is that they use one’s existing Samsung phone as the screen – combining it with good stereo optics and high-resolution, low-latency accelerometers built into the headset.  While the resolution of high-end phone screens is great for everyday use, the VR headset has to share the phone screen resolution between both eyes, which means I occasionally notice individual pixels.  But I quickly discounted that as the 3D VR experience drew me in, and within minutes of starting to use the VR headset I was totally immersed in travel photos and 3D movies.

The experience made me realize that an entry-level device like this one foreshadows the enormous potential of VR technology.  A great illustration of these trends was used in a presentation at the recent Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) conference by Steve Grubb, PhD, a senior network architect at Facebook.  I was much impressed by Steve’s description of the new Oculus VR technology that is projected to one day deliver 4K or even higher resolution.  Now that I’ve seen the power of what I consider low-definition VR, the idea of ultra-high-definition, pixel-free VR piped into each eye, with 360 degree video data synchronized to head movement, is truly exciting.  More importantly from the network operator perspective, imagine the impact on network bandwidth that this level of resolution will demand, since many of these VR experiences are streamed rather than downloaded and run locally.

This is yet another answer to the perennial question of “why would anyone ever need more than X megabits per second of bandwidth?” (in which X moves up quite a bit every year).  In fact, an immersive, 4K VR experience would make a big dent in a 1 gigabit per second (1G) feed. 

Committed to Sustainability

By Lena Båvegård

Sr. Director, Corporate Quality and Sustainability

Based on trends in our industry, sustainable development is expected now more than ever by both customers and investors. Infinera is committed to sustainability, and we have recently published our Sustainability Report for 2015, which provides an overview of our sustainability programs and activities.

In recent years, the focus on sustainability has increased dramatically. A growing number of Infinera’s customers, including all of Infinera’s major European customers, as well as major European investors, have adopted sustainability performance as an important criterion when evaluating suppliers and investments. Based on interviews I conducted with customers and investors in 2014 and 2015, each expressed a strong interest in forging a long-term relationship with us provided that we, as well as our vendors, continue to focus on legal compliance, business ethics, and social responsibility in our business practices.

Over the past nine months, I have had the opportunity to engage various departments to combine the best sustainability practices of Infinera with those from Transmode Systems, where before the acquisition, I was primarily responsible for quality and sustainability since 2011. I had two major tasks, which have since been completed:  Promote Infinera’s support for the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), and drive publication of Infinera’s Sustainability Report in 2015.

UNGC defines 10 principles covering human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption. By supporting UNGC, Infinera has committed to align with these principles and to take action to support them in our industry.

Infinera’s Sustainability Report 2015

The Sustainability Report provides an overview of Infinera’s sustainability program and activities, including the long-term sustainability strategy for the company. The report identifies four key focus areas:

Ahead In the Clouds

By Jay Gill

Principal Product Marketing Manager

For the past few years hyperscale Internet content providers (ICPs) have been attracting attention because the global network investments they are making to interconnect their data centers are outpacing investments being made by traditional service providers. Once again in 2015, ICP investments in data center interconnect (DCI) grew fastest, more than doubling the growth rate of every other segment, according to Ovum’s recently published Market Share Report: 4Q15 and 2015 Data Center Interconnect (DCI). The ICP segment is now 34% of the global DCI market, and over 50% of the largest market, North America.

It should come as no surprise that competition to serve this large and fast-growing market is fierce. But perhaps some observers might be surprised to learn that Infinera has not only maintained its strong lead in the market, which it first gained in early 2014, it has increased that lead dramatically. Per Ovum, Infinera finished 2015 with a 29% share of the ICP DCI market, 8.5% higher than a year earlier and 10% higher than the nearest competitor.

How has Infinera been able to grow DCI share so dramatically among ICPs?

Solving Scale Challenges in Mexico – One of Latin America’s Fastest Growing Markets

By John Martinez, Sr. Marketing Specialist

According to emarketer.com, it is estimated that in 2015 there were over 60 million Internet users in Mexico, which represents about a 50% penetration rate.  Compared to other countries this rate is low, but according to eMarketer, Mexico’s Internet adoption rate is rapidly growing with a 9.4% year-over-year expansion in 2015. The resulting upward trend in bandwidth consumption, combined with the increase from bandwidth hungry applications, is creating capacity constraints in many of Mexico’s largest cities.

To solve the challenge of continuous growth in bandwidth demand, service providers delivering mobile and fixed-line services to Mexico’s metropolitan areas have a real and urgent need for scalable information and communications technology (ICT). Infinera’s Intelligent Transport Networks have been proven to provide the scalable network bandwidth service providers need when confronted with rapid growth in demand.

To demonstrate the benefits of Infinera’s end-to-end packet-optical solutions for service providers in Mexico, we recently showcased our Infinera Express, the technologically advanced mobile innovation lab, to more than 400 customers and prospective customers.

Reducing Cost and Latency in Ring-based Multi-Layer Networks (AKA Lessons Learned on the Circle Line)

By Chris Liou, VP Network Strategy

In the London rail system, there is a line called the Circle Line that ferries riders past many famous tube stops in central London – Victoria Station, Paddington, etc. On my last trip to London, I got on the train going the wrong direction. So instead of only needing to transit eight or so stops, I ended up going the other way around the ring, going through 15 or so stops, resulting in a considerable delay, not to mention the stress and anxiety that went along with knowing I might miss my flight home.

In transit systems, it’s a well-known fact that in general you want to avoid as many transit stops as possible – in air travel that means direct flights are preferred over multi-hop flights with layovers, and for the Circle Line, it sure would be great if they had rails that could cut across the ring to create shortcuts. Imagine the savings in total travel time that would come from eliminating transit point delays (where passengers get on and off) as well as potentially reducing actual time in motion. From a passenger’s perspective, an ideal transit system would always provide a single hop to one’s final destination. This would reduce the size of the railcars needed, because each one could be sized for the number of people going from station A to station Z, but the cost of realizing such a vision on the Circle Line is clearly impractical and cost-prohibitive never mind the fact that it would be extremely challenging to engineer. So, instead, we live with the current model of a large-capacity train, sized to accommodate passengers getting on and off at various stations, enduring the “cost” of going through each station en route.

In many ways, multi-layer ring-based Internet protocol (IP)/optical networks have similar challenges. If we consider a physical fiber-based ring that interconnects multiple cities, and the variable/bursty traffic demands that might go between any two cities, it makes sense to deploy IP routers at each location. These routers not only terminate services or traffic at these sites, but also act as intermediate transit nodes for traffic that is just passing through. This works well for up to several nodes, but starts to become inefficient as the percentage of transit traffic at a router site becomes too large, proportionally to the add/drop traffic. At some point, creating a partial mesh topology becomes highly desirable for diversity as well as traffic optimization reasons. But that’s a topic for another day. For this discussion, let’s consider a fixed physical fiber ring, because many fiber rings with 10 or fewer sites exist today, and an assumption of traffic following a general “anywhere-to-anywhere” pattern with a mix of small and large flows.

There are multiple options for building such a fiber ring-based network. The simplest way is to deploy routers and use static point-to-point wavelengths (via wavelength-division multiplexed or WDM optics) between each pair of neighboring nodes, very much like the Circle Line model. While simple to engineer, this method incurs a high proportion of transit traffic at each router location, and is typically the most expensive to scale. From a multi-layer networking perspective, it is a somewhat rudimentary approach that does not provide network operators with ways to optimize the optical transport layer. As such, let’s look at three multi-layer options that leverage a flexible optical transport layer:

• Option 1: routers and wavelength-granular switching using WDM/reconfigurable add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs)
• Option 2: routers and optical transport network (OTN) switching (WDM/OTN)
• Option 3: routers and packet-aware OTN switching (WDM/P-OTN)

ANGA COM Takeaway: Technologies That Are Enabling Increased Network Flexibility and Spectral Efficiency

By Gaylord Hart

Director of MSO Market Segment

Recently I attended the ANGA COM Exhibition and Congress in Cologne, Germany, the largest broadband and cable conference in Europe and growing, with over 1800 attendees and 450 exhibitors from 89 countries this year. This conference continues to be a focal point for the international cable telecommunications community.

As always seems to be the case these days, much of the conference was focused on how operators can continue to increase broadband speeds and deal with the continuing explosion in bandwidth demand.  DOCSIS 3.1 was a major topic of discussion, but this year symmetrical DOCSIS was all the buzz, with its promise for radically increasing return path capacity and speed.

As part of the ANGA Congress technical session “FTTX – Stepping into the Gigabit Society,” I gave a presentation entitled “FlexGrid Optical Networks and Terabit Super-Channels.” The focus of my presentation was on increasing network flexibility and spectral efficiency by using flexible grid (FlexGrid) line systems and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) terabit (T) super-channels. It’s not possible today to implement a terabit super-channel with just one or two waves due to constraints on silicon speed, so the fastest time to market and most practical approach will use a multi-carrier solution. Using 100 gigabit per second (100G) technology per constituent wave, implementing such super-channels is possible today.

However, the multi-carrier approach leads to increased complexity.