OIF Greets 2007 With New Agreement and Technical Projects.

E-NNI Routing IA Approved, Software and Optical Projects Launched

FREMONT, Calif. -- Members of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) hit the ground running at the Forum's first technical meeting of 2007 in Silicon Valley last month. The OIF's working groups launched two new projects, the membership approved a new Implementation Agreement and technical leadership elections were conducted.

The newly approved External Network-Network-Interface (E-NNI) OSPF-based Routing Implementation Agreement (IA) defines key requirements for exchange of network topology and status information between control domains within an ASON network. This allows for path computation across optical domains managed individually by different methods, such as GMPLS. E-NNI Routing will support scalable routing and interoperability across a carrier's multi-vendor optical network for services such as Ethernet transport and bandwidth on demand. The IA document includes results from multi-vendor interoperability testing performed in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The IA is available for public viewing at http://oiforum.com/public/impagreements.html.

The Software Working Group has started a new project, the Extensions for the Interface Management API project, which will enrich the existing Rev 3.0 IA that was released in 2004. The new project will support features added to Ethernet, SONET, SDH and PDH by the most recent standardization work in IEEE, ITU-T, MEF, and OPTXS. The project is aimed at enhancing the applicability of the IA for interactions among various components that implement the Management, Control, and Transport Plane aspects of OIF IAs.

"These extensions to our APIs will allow system vendors to develop and interface control functions for Ethernet Services, GFP, VCAT, LCAS and protection switching." said Alex Conta of Transwitch Corporation and the OIF's Software Working Group chair. "This, combined with our existing set of 44 software APIs, will enable further componentization of networking functions."

A second project, led by the Physical Link Layer (PLL) Working Group, focused on 40 Gbps Optical Signaling work. The project will be executed in conjunction with the ITU-T. The project will study 40 Gbps modulation techniques suitable for transport of OC-768 / STM-256 / OTU3 over higher dispersion links, including longer transmission distances and operation without dispersion compensation. The majority of 40 Gbps interfaces introduced in recent years have been sub-2km links of standard single mode fiber (SMF). Traditional NRZ or OOK data transmission formats are tolerant of an accumulated dispersion of ~ 40ps/nm over SMF before dispersion compensation is required. Alternate Modulation techniques such as DuoBinary Modulation or DQPSK seem to offer better dispersion-tolerant performance in the 1550nm wavelength range. There are no defined interoperable optical interfaces for 40 G/bps serial data transmission for links with over eN200ps/nm of accumulated dispersion, which corresponds to a transmission distance of 10 km over SMF, without the use of dispersion compensators. This project will study different modulation schemes and provide a recommendation for adoption in formal standards by ITU-T.

OIF Re-elects Working Group Chairs

OIF members gathered at last month's quarterly meeting re-elected Carrier Working Group Chair Hans-Martin Foisel of Deutsche Telekom and OAM&P Working Group Chair Doug Zuckerman of Telcordia Technologies.

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, interconnect, network processing and component technologies, and optical networking systems. 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 802.3, IETF, ITU-T Study Group 13, ITU-T Study Group 15, IPv6 Forum, MFA Forum, MEF, MVA, ATIS OPTXS, ATIS TMOC, Rapid I/O, TMF, UXPi and the XFP MSA Group. More information on the OIF can be found at www.oiforum.com http://www.oiforum.com.