Networks running out of capacity allege photonics experts
Friday, 11 July 2008
Networks running out of capacity allege photonics experts…
Photonics company CIP Technologies is claiming that the telecoms network bandwidth glut is history and that the world's consumers are now.facing a bandwidth famine.
The assertion is based on the findings of an independent ‘Global Bandwidth Study’, commissioned by the company. This piece of work argues that, due to huge changes in network content and social behaviours, bandwidth demand is set to exceed 60Tbits/s by 2010 – an annual demand that exceeds the equivalent of the combined broadband network usage of the previous decade (1998 to 2008). As evidence, the study cites phenomena such as the explosion of consumers’ use of online video and data services, which includes the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube, which has seen the demand for Internet bandwidth soar. Moreover, the study’s author David Payne (formerly BT and now with the Institute of Advanced Telecommunications at Swansea University), calculates that the increasing demands are not a temporary change in behaviour, but the beginning of a massive requirement for additional bandwidth as the use of online video and data services increases.
“Around the turn of the millennium, we used to talk about a bandwidth ‘glut’. There was a lot of idle capacity. Networks now are being used in a way that few people foresaw, for example early take-up of personalised video, rather than broadcast television, dominating internet video services,” offers Payne. “Based on a range of service scenario models, it is clear that demands for bandwidth will continue to put increasing pressure on existing network infrastructures. By 2018, assuming that this capacity is made available by the operators; usage could grow to 40 to 100 times the levels seen in networks today. However it is difficult to see how operators can economically grow existing network architectures to meet this demand, and further consideration of the types of networks and the technology deployed is required if they are to ensure profitability.”
The dark side, and going faster
What to do about this looming famine? Notwithstanding the blood letting in the sector that accompanied the dot.com bubble burst, the dark fibre idustry is still around. A recent report from consulting firm BroadGroup – ‘ Dark Fibre Markets in Europe II’ - noted that dark fibre in that region, for instance, exhibits steady growth, averaging at 8% per annum, and continuing through to 2012.
Many vendors are endeavouring to use technology to pump up the network capacity volume. At the recent NXTcomm08 show in Las Vegas , for example, a number of companies detailed efforts to up the fibre transport ante from 10Gbits/s to 40Gbits/s, and thence to 100Gbits/s. One demo mounted by XO Communications and Infinera showed what was billed as the first time that 100 Gigabit Ethernet traffic in production-ready form had been run over a live network.
Meantime, Nortel Networks, another NXTcomm08 participant, has won a deal with Southern Cross Cables to upgrade the carrier’s terrestrial optical network in the USA from its current 10Gbits/s technology to 40Gbits/s with a drop-in card upgrade and with the potential of a future shift up to 100Gbits/s using the same mechanism.
But, however innovative, will ‘go-faster’ versions of current technology cut the capacity mustard? CIP cto David Smith seems to suggest: ‘maybe not’.
“The Global Bandwidth Study demonstrates that current telecom networks will be unable to cope with the scaling demands for bandwidth. A step-change in technology is needed that can not only deliver this bandwidth demand at economic cost but also significantly reduce the amount of energy required to power and cool it,” he argues. “The current technology will be physically too large and energy-hungry to deliver the levels of bandwidth growth demanded by users. A new technology is required that will help deliver the bandwidth and support the telcos' challenge to reduce costs and their carbon footprint. CIP believes that photonic integration will be increasingly the way forward to provide the step change cost reduction per unit bandwidth necessary to economically meet projected demand.”
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