Optical Transceivers in Open Networks

Open Networking switches and software stacks are disrupting the industry and leading to a rapid increase in innovation, choice and flexibility in network deploymen …

Open Networking switches and software stacks are disrupting the industry and leading to a rapid increase in innovation, choice and flexibility in network deployments. However there are still feature and functionality gaps in open networking hardware and software stacks that need to be addressed before they can become a mainstream choice for network operators. This talk will address the topic of optical transceiver deployments and readiness in open network infrastructure. It will provide an overview of optics standards and interface types and will comment on ongoing efforts in the industry to ensure interoperability in open networking switches. The talk will then focus on the development of an open, industry standard interface to monitor and control Optical Transceivers in active use in network switches. The interface has been implemented in an open source software package which is freely available, vendor neutral, and can support any switch or NOS that provides read and write access to the EEPROM data in the transceivers.