Contributed by C. David Chaffee, Chaffee Fiber Optics

We sometimes forget that the service providers need to stay up almost in real time with the varous iterations the Internet is going through. Forget getting over voice to accommdate data. The Internet has metamorphosed far beyond that and is changing almost daily.

"The super-aggregators are changing the way the Internet is configured," says Verizon's Stuart Elby, who spoke at the Service Provider Summit this morning. Up until recently the Internet was "well structured," and then the Googles came along and changed all that, he laments. "You and I used to be albe to connect to the Internet the same way businesses did."

These super aggregators now account for about 50 percent of Internet traffic, Elby calculates. "These hyper-giants are aggregating a lot of content." He calculates there are 30 or 40 main culprits.

One could say they are having a worldwide impact if one is following what is happening in China with Google. Indeed, they are changing the face of the Internet globally. Elby calculates that more than a billion people now use the Internet.

This has caused a big change from Verizon's perspective. "It also has changed how goods and services are paid for on the Internet," he observes.

"The result is that content is being higly consolidated by a small number of hyper giants."

Other changes have included flow from the premise through passive optical networking technology, which in some instances have caused the bottleneck to be pushed farther out into the network. And of course there is the advent of cloud computing.

"In the past we saw a simple number of devices, such as computers and MACs," says Stuart. "More recently we have seen thousands of different types of devices with different formats connected to the network. User content sometimes has to be transformed into hundreds or thousands of different flavors."

But those are not the only changes. Some time in the last two years it became clear that the Internet was being accessed more by mobile devices than fixed devices, according to Stuart. "This concerns me greatly," says Stuart. "Mobile IP which is what most wireless networks are based upon, MIP, are all about simplifying the control at the cost of the tradeoff of not optimizing the router." The result is Verizon is looking for companies to "optimize the routing. Please either optimize or take us away from mobile IP."

There is a good reason Stuart is almost pleading in this request. The company's FiOS fiber to the home build is largely closing down at least for now and the carrier is focusing on wireless technologies next year. It is in a battle with AT&T to build the best wireless network in America, a theme that is being played out in competing national ad campaigns.

With the prospect of bringing 1 gig to the home and potentially 10 gig to the home, Verizon is rapidly upgraiding to 40 gig in the metro space, says Stuart. This is going to the head end if a cable company a central office if a telco.

Is it any wonder that Verizon is the first company to go to 100 gig in its commercial network in North America? "We are quickly going from 10 to 40 to 100 gig all because end users at the bottom are trying to get to the clouds on top," he says referring to a viewgraph he shows.

The end result? "Lots of users are trying to get content from a very few sources," says Stuart. And the bandwidth requirements keep on heading up to the clouds.

Contributed by C. David Chaffee, Chaffee Fiber Optics

Not surprisingly, the main focus of the OFC Executive Summit at least this morning has been 40 gigs and 100 gigs. Finisar Chairman Jerry Rawls, who had some good one liners, congratulated all in attendance as being "survivors, we are all still alive and can look to 40 G and 100 G to move ahead."

As Ovum's Dana Cooperson pointed out, however, 40 G and 100 G are becoming two distinct markets and technologies. They are no longer lumped together just the next gen high-speed solutions. 40 G is becoming a reality now, while 100 G is still in its very early stages, said Dana.In fact 40 G represented a $500 million market in 2009 and is expected to double again this year. That's beginning to sound serious.

"We are starting to see 40 G take off," said Dana. "We are starting to see the prices get to the point where 40 G makes a lot of sense." She commended Nortel for "incredibly" shipping 100 G product in 2009, although it is still very early days for that space. "We are at the very, very early initial stages for 100 G."

 The idea that major network carriers are holding off for 100 G seems to be lost in the rush of companies actually being able to get 40 G. In fact, Jerry says his company has not yet even begun making 100 G chipsets.

As we step up to the next level, a lot of 10 G is continuing to go in, although Dana said 2.5 Gbps is "starting to die off."

Google again seems to be ahead of the curve. "For us," said Google Senior Network Architect Bikash Koley, " the question is not 40G or 100G but how many 100 G streams you can run in a fiber."

Getting back to Rawls' first quote, its is nice for the fiber optics industry to once again have a market to look forward to, similar to when it looked forward to 10 Gbps back in the 1990s. "Prime time for 40 gig and 100 gig is still ahead of us" said Hans-Juergen Schmidtke at Nokia-Siemens Networks. Schmidtke believes network traffic will grow 100 fold in the next five to seven years.  

So once the 40 gig market reaches maturity, how many successful 100 gig companies will follow? The concensus was three or four on Panel 2: Components and Subsystems for 40- and 100 Gbps."  But those lucky enough to make it should do very well as the market will be huge, according to Sierra Monolithics CEO Javed Patel.

By the way, there is still strong sentiment for consolidation in the optical components space as voiced by Jerry Rawls and Mintera CEO Terry Unter even with all that has happened. However, Jerry doesn't see any companies going out of business as the result of the 100 G consolidation, noting for example that companies in Japan never do. He does expect a few guys in America to "lose their jobs."

But all in all the mood is good, upbeat. There is a lot to look forward to in accommodating burgeoning Internet growth especially as the major carriers wake from their recent cap ex slumber and the building blocks seem to be 40 G and 100 G for years to come.

Post contributed by C. David Chaffee, Chaffee Fiber Optics

How appropriate to have Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist and the "Father of the Internet" (sorry, Al Gore), kick off the 2010 Executive Forum at OFC/NFOEC this morning. Cerf lives in a world of interplanetary Internets ("Unfortunately, we haven't yet figured out how to stop the planets from revolving around the sun"), where he is notified remotely if his wine cellar gets above a certain temperature,and where terabit speeds down a fiber are everyday realities.

 The 1-Gbps-to-the-home experiment that Google has announced has mainly been about "where the community is going to be located to this point," Cerf said. One town has agreed to change its name to "Google" if it gets the job while a second says it will distribute Google beer if it gets the honor, Vint told us.

Not surprisingly, Google's interest in building such a network is in how it will work. Most of the human interest to this point, and the interest from the Federal Communications Commission, has been for the folks who will be the beneficiaries of such a nice chunk of broadband. "Part of this is trying to find out what the implementation issues are," Vint said. "We are also interested in what the economics are going to look like." We would venture to say that Verizon, AT&T and most other carriers will also be keenly interested in those numbers.

"Its clear that the obvious thing to do is fiber-based," says Cerf about the one gig community. However, high speed radio waves may also play a role. "High speed radio working off fiber is a very attractive combination," he believes.

Regarding applications, Cerf said his hope is that "people will invent applications that we haven't thought of. If there is any lesson to be taken away from the Internet, it is that the users will have a better understanding than any vendor could possibly have." Now, there's a novel idea. After years of trying to have businesses anticipate how people will use bandwidth, why not let the people who use it themselves tell us.

As Charlie Kao, who founded fiber optics and who is being honored this week here at OFC/NFOEC has observed, "If you give people the bandwidth, they will find creative ways to use it." As with any idea that seems to naturally make sense, I have to wonder why we didn't do this years ago.

Ever the realist, Cerf said the 1 Gbps to the premise idea is not new, only new to America. You can actually get 1 Gbps in Tokyo for a reasonable cost and in some other places you can own your own dark fiber, he observed.

Along those lines, Cerf recognizes the problems with security over the Internet, and acknowledges that we are a long way to figuring it all out. He encourages users to constantly change their passwords. "Don't use reusable passwords," he says."Find methods to use dynamic passwords." Makes sense, but easier said than done.

Vint is also concerned about something he calls  "Bit Drop." "How much of the software we use in the year 3000, possibly Windows 3000, will be able to go back and read documents in 2000?" he wondered. "How much software in 2015 will be able to read documents we created in 2000? It's a concern."

It is a concern. Yet somehow it suggests the importance of new interactive software that will not just dump older files it needs to read. 

By Patricia Daukantas

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