Telemetry and AI-based security P4 applications for optical networks [Invited]

This paper presents the potentials and challenges of programmable packet-optical nodes encompassing coherent pluggable modules applied in the context of optical metro networks. Two innovative applications of P4-based data plane programmability are then presented. The first targets the monitoring and processing of optical telemetry data/metadata directly in the forwarding plane. The second one focuses on the deployment of deep neural networks in P4 chipsets, effectively supporting in-network distributed cyber security functionalities in packet-optical nodes.