The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) celebrated ten years of contributions to the optical networking industry at its 4Q meeting last month. During the past ten years, the OIF has developed thirty-nine technical implementation agreements that tackle a wide range of issues in optical networking and requirements for the industry. With a membership roster that includes carriers, systems vendors, component vendors and software vendors, the OIF has produced nine interoperability demonstrations that provide members with a unique opportunity to collaborate on the development of interoperable networking solutions.
Keeping with the tradition of bringing value to the industry, the OIF announced a 100G Long-Haul DWDM Transmission Module project at last month's meeting. In addition, OIF members approved the completion of SFI-S, an implementation agreement that defines a scalable interface between SERDES and Framer devices from 40G to 100G and beyond.
100G Long-Haul DWDM Transmission Module - Electromechanical Project
The 100G Long-Haul DWDM Transmission Module - Electromechanical (MSA-100G-LH-EM) project will define mechanical dimensions of an optical line interface module, as well as the electrical connector, maximum power consumption and communication interface. This project is part of the OIF's efforts to accelerate the availability of 100G networks.
"In an attempt to alleviate the problems of early adopters, the OIF is bringing together carriers, systems vendors and component suppliers to arrive at a consensus solution," said Karl Gass of Sandia National Laboratories and the Physical and Link Layer Working Group vice chair. "The 100G Electromechanical project will give suppliers a starting point for multi-source transponder designs. The OIF continues to identify projects that are required to address the 100G needs of the industry."
SFI-S Implementation Agreement
The OIF membership has approved an implementation agreement that defines a scalable interface between SERDES and Framer devices from 40G to 100G and beyond for the physical layer. The SFI-S IA is based on 4 - 20 data lines plus deskew channel, for aggregate data bandwidths in the range of 40 - 160 Gbps data rate. The SFI-S project is an extension of the prevalent OIF SFI-4 specification for electrical 10 Gbps interfaces used on all 300-pin transponders. SFI-S is targeted to support the 100G work being addressed by standards bodies like IEEE 802.3ba and ITU-T and forums like ATIS and the Ethernet Alliance. The implementation agreement is available at http://www.oiforum.com/public/documents/OIF_SFI-S_01.0_IA.pdf
Forum Leader Elections
Newly elected to the OIF is Torsten Wuth of Nokia Siemens Networks. Wuth will serve a two-year term as the Physical & Link Layer User Group chair. In the board of directors election, the OIF membership reelected Hans-Martin Foisel of Deutsche Telekom, Steve Joiner of Finisar and Stephen Shew of Nortel Networks to two-year terms; Hans-Martin Foisel will continue to serve as president; Stephen Shew will continue as secretary/treasurer. Alessandro D'Alessandro of Telecom Italia and Jeff Hutchins of CoreOptics were also reelected to the board of directors for one-year terms. Monica Lazer of AT&T continues to serve as vice president and Jim Jones of Alcatel-Lucent continues to serve as vice president of marketing, both as part of two-year terms on the board.
In addition, the OIF announced that the following members were reelected for one-year terms; Dave Brown of Alcatel-Lucent and Rod Smith of Tyco Electronics as Market Awareness & Education (MA&E) Committee co-chairs; Lyndon Ong of Ciena as Technical Committee Chair; and Chuck Sannipoli of IP Infusion as Technical Committee Vice Chair. Jonathan Sadler of Tellabs was reelected to a two-year term as Architecture and Signaling working group chair.
About the OIF
Launched in April of 1998, the OIF is the only industry group uniting representatives from data and optical networking disciplines, including many of the world's leading carriers, component manufacturers and system vendors. The OIF promotes the development and deployment of interoperable networking solutions and services through the creation of implementation agreements (IAs) for optical networking systems and optical, interconnect, network processing and component technologies. The OIF actively supports and extends the work of national and international standards bodies with the goal of promoting worldwide compatibility of optical internetworking products. Working relationships or formal liaisons have been established with the IEEE 802.1, IEEE 802.3ba, IETF, ITU-T Study Group 13, ITU-T Study Group 15, IPv6 Forum, IP-MPLS Forum, MEF, ATIS OPTXS, ATIS TMOC, Rapid I/O, TMF, Ethernet Alliance and the XFP MSA Group. More information on the OIF can be found at www.oiforum.com.
