Huawei Demonstrates OBTN Prototype at OFC/NFOEC 2011

The successful development of this prototype highly accelerates the evolution towards an all-optical switching network.

OBTN is an all-optical switching technology led by Huawei. It enables convergence of Layer 0 (optical layer), Layer 1 (electrical physical layer) and Layer 2 (link layer), reducing the total OAM of a network. Compared with previous packet add/drop schemes, OBTN is compatible with current WDM wavelength-switching networks and is able to offer both sub-wavelength and wavelength granularity aggregation. By attaching optical control labels to each optical packet, sub-wavelength add/drop is realized based on all-optical processing.

The OBTN prototype is a significant milestone in the progress towards the all optical network. Huawei views strategic investment in advanced transport technologies as a key foundation to solve its customers' challenges as networks scale in bandwidth and transition to packet centric topologies, said Changtian Cai, President of Huawei Transport Network.