At the Optical FiberCommunication Exhibition and Symposium (OFC2017) held in Los Angeles, Huawei released the "White Paper on Key Technologies for Open Optical Network Transmission Systems" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"), which highlights the industry's urgent demand for network openness and the biggest challenges it faces, and proposes that Open interfaces at the control layer and integration and consolidation at the transport layer are key initiatives to address the demand for network openness.

Currently, the optical network industry is in a critical transition period, and the emergence of 4K/8K video, VR/AR, cloud computing, 5G, data centers and other emerging services has put forward higher requirements for communication networks, which need to significantly improve the carrying capacity, but also openness, in order to meet the flexible, intelligent, and diversified deployment needs of emerging services.

IHS survey statistics on operators' willingness to deploy open line systems

According to the survey results of IHS, an optical network analyzer, network openness is gradually becoming an industry consensus. Operators hope to obtain greater network autonomy through open networks, to realize the smooth docking and transfer of services between different networks, and to achieve flexible control of the network and rapid service deployment to meet the current rapid development of new network services;

The white paper points out that due to the high complexity of optical networks, it is not suitable to open up the lowest physical transport layer. Open transport layer, will bring the risk of system integration difficulties, difficult to ensure the reliability / stability of the network, transmission performance is reduced or even significantly increase OPEX. therefore, operators in the open network at the same time, still need to ensure the reliability of the overall network performance.

The white paper suggests that operators in the open network at the same time, the underlying optical transmission system can be handed over to equipment vendors to integrate, the upper layer of the network control back to the main body of the operator, so that all parties in the industry to do their best to ensure the stability of the system at the same time, maximize the right to open the network. At the same time, based on existing standards and technology, to promote the standardization of software interfaces, connecting the underlying transmission system and the upper layer of control, to achieve the business in different equipment vendors network interoperability, free deployment, and ultimately realize the network open.

Facing the comprehensive cloudization of transport networks and operators' demand for open networks, Huawei launched the CloudOptiX cloud transport network solution at Mobile World Congress 2017. Based on an open network architecture, the solution supports multi-vendor, cross-domain interconnection and interoperability of services, optimizes network resource allocation, and reduces operational costs. At the same time, CloudOptiX organically combines the latest technologies in the optical and electrical domains to ensure that the underlying transport system is stable and reliable and continues to evolve.CloudOptiX will accelerate the network ecosystem towards openness, help operators fully cloud their networks, realize digital transformation, and build a future large-bandwidth, low-latency, intelligent, and open transport network that will comprehensively support a wide range of emerging network services in the future.