Sunday 16 March 2025
The quest for open and interoperable optical networks has been a long-standing challenge in the field of telecommunications. Traditional reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and transponders have made significant strides towards this goal, but their interfaces and control planes remain largely proprietary and closed off from outsiders.
Enter the optical-circuit-switches (OCSes), which offer a more cost-effective and higher-capacity alternative to traditional electrical packet switches. However, the open interfaces and control planes for OCSes have yet to be defined by standard-defining organizations, leaving a void in the market.
A team of researchers from NTT Network Innovation Laboratories and Trinity College Dublin has set out to address this issue by developing an SDN (software-defined networking) controller specifically designed for open optical-circuit-switched networks. The controller is designed to quickly and consistently operate fiber paths upon receiving operation requests, making it a key component in the quest for more flexible and efficient network management.
The researchers identified several use cases for OCSes, including intra-datacenter networks (DCNs), wide-area networks (WANs), and metro-access converged optical networks. From these use cases, they derived the requirements for an SDN controller that could support them.
The proposed MV-OCS controller framework is designed to be multi-vendor compatible, allowing it to operate seamlessly with different OCS vendors. The controller uses a combination of NetConf/RESTCONF protocols to manage and configure the network, providing a highly scalable and flexible architecture.
To validate their design, the researchers implemented the SDN controller on actual MV-OCS networks and evaluated its performance. Their results show that the controller is able to quickly and consistently operate fiber paths, with configuration times of less than one second.
The implications of this research are significant. By providing an open and interoperable SDN controller for OCSes, the team has taken a major step towards making optical networks more flexible, efficient, and cost-effective. This could have far-reaching benefits for network operators and users alike, enabling faster deployment of new services, improved network reliability, and reduced costs.
The development of this SDN controller also highlights the potential for software-defined networking to play a key role in shaping the future of telecommunications. By providing a flexible and programmable architecture, SDN can enable new levels of innovation and customization in network design and management, ultimately leading to better services and more competitive markets.
Cite this article: “SDN Controller for Open Optical-Circuit-Switched Networks”, The Science Archive, 2025.
Optical-Circuit-Switched Networks, Software-Defined Networking, Open Optical Networks, Interoperability, Sdn Controllers, Netconf/Restconf Protocols, Multi-Vendor Compatibility, Network Management, Fiber Paths, Telecommunications.
