The editor-in-chief of Light Reading compiled the optical network trends that industry analysts are concerned about in 2023, including ubiquitous pluggable optics, data center transmission, next-generation DSP, and coherent routing.
ICC News In 2023, almost all technology trends worth pursuing will rely on fast connections, and optical networks will occupy a place among them.
Fiber optics provide greater bandwidth, security, and reliability than any other medium. But in the field of optical networking, there are many moving parts. Here are some optical networking trends that some analysts say they will be watching in 2023.
Pluggable Optics (everywhere)
Optical networking analyst Sterling Perrin of Heavy Reading sees “pluggable optics everywhere” as a dominant theme. “This includes the continued trend of 400ZR and 400ZR+, but also a strong focus on down-migration to small coherent 100G pluggable, pluggable across 5G XHaul networks, and in PON,” he wrote in a note to Light Reading. pluggable.”
Data Center Transmission
Omdia’s senior analyst of optical components, Lisa Huff, said she would pay close attention to whether 800G and 1.6T transmission will appear in the data center. She writes: “We are in the middle of 400G deployments in the data center, and, as ever, there is a lot of hype about the next data rate. Omdia expects to start deploying 2*400G and 8*100G solutions in the data center in 2023.” scheme, but we won’t see mass deployments of 800G until around 2025 when DR4 and FR4 variants mature and 400G starts to slow down. 1.6T deployments may begin in 2026, but probably not until 2027 or later before we see large-scale deployments.”
Next Generation DSP
Economic recessions typically dampen sales of optical transport systems, but Dell’Oro vice president Jimmy Yu said 2023 could be different following a raft of supply chain issues. “We believe supply shortages will ease in 2023, allowing system suppliers to ship more and realize higher revenues,” he wrote.
Yu expects Ciena and Infinera to announce their next-generation coherent digital signal processor (DSP) plans. He said that Cisco has announced that it will launch a 1.2Tbit/s coherent DSP in 2023, but we are still waiting for news from Ciena and Infinera.
Coherent Routing
Finally, Timothy Munks, senior principal analyst at Omdia, said that with the growth of data traffic at the network’s edge, network operators are looking for better solutions to collect data and move it to the metro and core networks. “The convergence of IP and optical, or coherent routing, provides cost-effective aggregation and transport of disparate traffic and offers network operators a pure pay-as-you-grow business model for capacity additions,” he wrote.