ESnet’s Work in SDN, Energy Efficiency Highlighted at Global Networking Conference

ESnet’s contribution to the global networking community continues to gain momentum, most recently going up a notch or two with a series of talks, vendor presentations and a demo at OFC/NFOEC 2013, the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference, held March 17-21 in Los Angeles.

OFC/NFOEC is the largest global conference and exposition for optical communications and networking professionals.

ESnet shared its networking expertise in the following program components:

• Mike Bennett, head of the Network Engineering Group, gave an invited talk on “Network Energy Efficiency in the Data Center” as part of the program track on Optical Interconnection Networks for Datacom and Computercom. 

• Inder Monga, Chief Technologist and Area Lead of network engineering, tools and research, presented “WAN Virtualization: Looking Beyond Point-to-Point Circuits” during a special symposium on Network Virtualization.

• Monga also was one of five invited speakers in a panel discussion of Dynamic Network Services focusing on “bandwidth-on-demand” connections and chaired a papers session on SDN in Today’s Networks. 

• In addition, there were two presentations by Infinera highlighting work with ESnet. In a workshop on SDN in Large Backbone Networks: Is There a Fit?, Infinera architect Ping Pan discussed a test bed project with ESnet to test software defined networking (SDN) at the optical level of ESnet’s 100G testbed in New York. Pan also discussed the project during a session on Software Defined Networks held as part of the conference exhibition. Infinera also had a related demo on Transport SDN in their booth.

• Carrier SDN was a hot topic, with OIF sponsoring a presentation series discussing the impact and potential future of that technology. Invited speaker Sterling Perrin of Heavy Reading, an independent firm providing analysis of emerging telecom trends, gave a presentation on the broad topic of programmability for Transport networks, and highlighted the ESnet/Infinera's transport SDN project as well.