ADVA Optical Networking Looks Ahead to 2013 After a ’Pivotal’ 2012

As the networking sector looks ahead to 2013 – after a “pivotal” 2012 – ADVA Optical Networking wants to build onto the current year’s achievements with a “new era of connectivity,” featuring “mobility, pervasive information and social fabrics.”


Brian Protiva, ADVA Optical Networking’s CEO, said these past 12 months saw the company “push the boundaries of technology and the rise of software-defined networking (SDN).”

“Even in the shadow of the financial crisis, ADVA drove ahead and also delivered on the promise of 100G, the promise of a unified mobile backhaul network and the promise of software frameworks enabling even greater operational simplicity,” Protiva added.

In 2012, ADVA achieved cross-sector success. For instance, the company had more than 30 announcements in 2012. These included news about new customers, additional deals with current customers, product innovations and added partnerships.

The areas with major achievements include long-haul and middle-mile customers, and the enterprise. Another important area was Internet exchanges, such as AMS-IX and DE-CIX. In addition, Pionier, a long-haul network based in Europe, selected ADVA’s multi-layer GMPLS-based control plane RAYcontrol. It uses ROADM technology to manage bandwidth needs in its network. With 6,500km of dark fiber, Pionier connects five supercomputing centers and 21 academic metropolitan-area networks. It offers high-speed connectivity to some 1,000 hospitals, institutions, museums and public authorities.

Also, Bluebird Network selected ADVA to extend broadband services to underserved regions in Missouri. Bluebird Network covers over 6,000 networking miles. And ADVA implemented OpenFlow – developed with the University of Essex- as part of the OFELIA project. ADVA also conducted trials with Telefonica and Juniper, and released UNI functionality for RAYcontrol.

Looking ahead, many exciting plans are in place for 2013. SDN is migrating into wide area network (WAN) infrastructure. There is a good chance there will be simpler hardware and centralized control. Also, a truly virtualized network environment is on the way. With the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the company in 2013 will develop SDN and OpenFlow technologies directed at the optical domain. Mobile backhaul is another key area for ADVA in 2013.

And there is a major push toward widespread 4G LTE availability. “Mobile backhaul stands to be a prime area for development, as the rollout of LTE and LTE-advanced services is illuminating the need to advance this area of the network,” Protiva said. “Two things must happen: fiber needs to be extended all the way to the base station, and a simpler and unified implementation of assured synchronization and timing must be extended across the mobile-backhaul infrastructure. We engineered our Syncjack solution specifically for such applications, and it is proven in its ability to help service providers strip away complexities and guarantee performance.”

Looking at the networking sector as a whole during 2013, networks will get “radically simpler to operate and maintain.”

“The line between service providers and enterprises is blurring,” Protiva added. “Examples include cloud service providers, content providers and resellers, research-and-education networks, financial institutions, healthcare organizations or any of the other companies that are investing in centralized data centers and virtualized networks. The service providers themselves are morphing their central offices into data centers, offering hosted applications, and acquiring cloud software capabilities.”

That means the network will be marked by simplicity, synchronization and software in 2013. There is much enthusiasm for the coming 12 months.

“This promises to be one of the most exciting years the industry has ever seen,” Protiva added.

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