Guest Editorial: Optical Networks Supporting Interoperability and White Boxes

The eight papers included in this special section focus on optical networks supporting interoperability and white boxes. The goal is to introduce the key challenges, trends, and innovations. In the recent years, network operators and service providers have shown their interest in pushing vendors to disaggregate networks and to guarantee multi-vendor interoperability. The disaggregation of software from hardware is a specific example. Aspects such as the clean separation of control, forwarding and management planes gain tremendous importance, as well as the deployment of data plane hardware to enable multi-vendor interoperability. This way, systems of different vendors can be used while optimizing performance and reducing capital expenditure without the need of being tied to single-vendor equipment. This approach also allows adopting the latest and best-of-breed technologies for the network deployment. We hope that this Special Issue will provide a timely snapshot of the state of the art in inter-operability, white boxes, and open systems. As they will start to penetrate the market, we aspire to provide interesting insights and contributions to the telecommunications community.