The Optical Internetworking Forum announced two new FlexE projects started at the quarterly meeting last month.  The OIF is also holding a workshop titled, FlexE Today and Tomorrow, in San Jose on January 20^th.

“The datacenter and communications industries are demanding a solution for flexible deployment and provisioning of Ethernet bandwidth,” said Scott Irwin of MoSys and the OIF’s Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Working Group protocol vice chair. “Building on its first generation of FlexE, the OIF has started a new project to support the next generation of Ethernet PHY rates currently under development within the IEEE 802.3 Working Group.  Because of the large industry interest in FlexE, the OIF is also hosting a workshop on the topic which allows non-members to learn about the work first hand.”

The FlexE 1.0 implementation agreement, completed in March of this year, provides a mechanism to map one or more FlexE clients over a group of 100 Gb/s Ethernet PHYs.  The client rates supported are 10G, 40G, and n×25G.  The new FlexE 2.0 project will add the ability to create FlexE groups of 200 Gb/s and 400 Gb/s Ethernet PHYs and to consider several other feature additions.

• More detail on use of FlexE management channels
• Coarser calendar granularity to reduce gate count for high bandwidth devices
• Management of skew for specific applications
• Transport of frequency or time by the FlexE group

FlexE 1.0 and ongoing revision enable 802.1 LLDP over management channels for FlexE Connectivity Verification.  However, FlexE capabilities discovery is still required to facilitate the setup of FlexE Group(s) and Clients. The new FlexE Neighbor Discovery project will introduce some OIF organizational specific FlexE Extension to LLDP for FlexE capabilities discovery.

FlexE Today and Tomorrow Workshop

January 20, 2017

9:30am-3:00pm

Hilton San Jose

This workshop will feature subject matter experts from the OIF who will provide a summary of completed and current FlexE projects, along with presentations and discussion on the future direction of FlexE. The workshop will begin with a summary of the FlexE 1.0 Implementation Agreement and will be followed by an overview of the active FlexE 2.0 project.  The workshop is open to the public.

Speakers and panelists include Luca Della Chiesa, Cisco; Tad Hofmeister, Google; Maarten Vissers, Huawei; Dave Ofelt, Juniper; Tom Issenhuth, Microsoft; Scott Irwin, MoSys and Stephen Trowbridge, Nokia.

AGENDA

9:30am: Registration and Continental Breakfast

10:00am: Welcome and Intro

10:15am: FlexE 1.0 Applications and IA

11:30am: FlexE 2.0 Project Summary

11:45pm: Lunch

12:45pm: FlexE Vision – Panelist presentations

2:25pm: Open Q&A with Panel

2:55pm: Wrap-up

 

REGISTRATION

• Deadline to register is January 16, 2017
• OIF Members: $150.00 USD; Non-members: $200.00 USD (fee includes lunch).

 

OIF Members, click HERE to register.

Non-members, click HERE to register.

 

About the OIF
The OIF facilitates the development and deployment of interoperable networking solutions and services. Members collaborate to drive Implementation Agreements (IAs) and interoperability demonstrations to accelerate and maximize market adoption of advanced internetworking technologies. OIF work applies to optical and electrical interconnects, optical component and network processing technologies, and to network control and operations including software defined networks and network function virtualization. The OIF actively supports and extends the work of national and international standards bodies. Launched in 1998, the OIF is the only industry group uniting representatives from across the spectrum of networking, including many of the world’s leading service providers, system vendors, component manufacturers, software and testing vendors. Information on the OIF can be found at http://www.oiforum.com.