Toward a completely softwareized optical network [Invited]

There is no denying the tremendous success of current optical network technologies. However, the existing optical network infrastructures are unable to support independent evolution and innovation of physical, transport, and network layer functionalities, protocols, and services. Nor can they support the increasing bandwidth demands of evolving applications and their heterogeneous resource usage and QoS requirements. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a completely softwareized optical network infrastructure and the key technology enablers, including an open and programmable optical white box, optical transport and switching technology abstractions, and a compute-aware optical network virtualization mechanism. The technology enablers are evaluated by experimental demonstration and simulation.