Collaboration with Cisco Systems

Modern data tunnel
06/02/2017 Cisco Systems, the world leader in sales of equipment and solutions for telecommunications, is increasingly involved in a fruitful collaboration with the research center FBK - CREATE-NET in particular with the Future Networks unit in the field of networks based on optical fibers, with the objective of working together with the next generation of Internet networks.

Data networks with optical technology are the backbone of national and international telecommunications and transport huge amounts of information in a reliable and fast manner. The research center CREATE-NET started to collaborate with Cisco Systems in 2006 with a seminal research project on the management of optical networks. The collaboration has touched important issues such as the introduction of GMPLS in optical networks, traffic optimization in DWDM networks, the study of flexible optical networks, contributing to the innovation process of the Cisco product lines.

The current research activity has produced a prototype based on the open source platform OpenDaylight that is able to create Optical Virtual Private Networks (OVPN), virtual optical networks.

The owners of large optical infrastructure will offer OVPN services that enable businesses and service providers to manage their own virtual network in a safe and autonomous way, as if they had a real physical network installed. With this solution we will create new business scenarios based on the sharing of the network infrastructure. The prototype was presented in 2016 at the Cisco Packet Optical Networking Conference, receiving a very positive response, and will be also shown in 2017 at the Berlin Cisco Live, an important industry event to be attended by thousands of industry experts.