Optical Ethernet - a Backbone for the Mobile Edge Cloud

Centralized data centers (DC) cannot fulfil the latency targets of the 5G mobile network due to the large fiber propagation delays. Processing resources need to move closer to the end devices. Therefore, the DCs are partially distributed into the metro area, the so called Mobile Edge Cloud. The traffic profile between the decentralized DC locations changes accordingly, from a streamlined collector/distributor tree of traditional metro networks into a full meshed packet switched network. Optical Ethernet is a network architecture to cope with the new requirements in a cost-efficient way. It behaves like packet switching without the recurring costly transit traffic processing in chains of regular packet switches. We present an overview of the architecture and report on measurement results that we obtained from a network of six prototype nodes.