Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Blog

BU may help end Ethernet’s reign

By Rodney Brown

Will the promise of an all-optical replacement for copper-cabled Ethernet finally be fulfilled at the Boston University Photonics Center? If Irish company Intune Networks has anything to say about it, yes it will.

Earlier this week, Intune announced that it would be working with BU’s Photonics Center through the creation of the Boston University Research Switch and Transport Network, which will study how to improve networks using Intune’s innovation, a way to switch optical signals in a network, called Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology. The simple version of this is that its tech would allow for switching data being transmitted as light-over fiber optic cables, without having to convert the data packets back to essentially radio transmissions sent along copper.

To give them credit, that barely scratches the surface of the innovation in the Intune Networks’ OPST offering, but the short version is that the long struggle to keep boosting up Ethernet speeds through 1 Gigabit per second to 10Gbps to the current cutting edge of 40Gbps may soon be over.

But what does that mean for me, you want to know? Well, if you are one of the users of the newfangled Verizon FiOS, you could see real speed increases eventually trickle down to you, as the speed of the network backbone climbs. You might even see costs come down (ha! right, as if) because the OPST tech is inherently less costly in terms of electrical use than current tech. That makes it greener than the switches that crowd the Ethernet world today, another factor that would make it more attractive.

More importantly, if you are a corporate user of your own large Wide Area Network, you could set up one that is entirely fiber-based and that runs on OPST tech. Anyone for 100Gbps direct fiber connections from your desktop to your corporate servers? I thought so. And the implications for that all-important buzzword, the Cloud, are vast. Much faster interconnections among geographically remote data centers means less likelihood of seeing a blip in your cloud-based LOLcatz distribution website, even if one of the centers has a hiccup.

The skeptical among you may ask, I this just some pie-in-sky hyped technology that will never pan out? Maybe, you, but no lesser entities than Verizon and BBN are interested in working with BURST on exploring uses of OPST, according to BU Professor Alexander (Sasha) Sergienko. Yeah, that Verizon, the one with the all-fiber TV and Internet network, the above-mentioned FiOS. And if the company that invented the Internet, BBN, is keen on the tech, we should all pay attention.

Bob Metcalfe’s baby, Ethernet, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But the bassinet is being prepped for the new kid on the block.