A History of OIF
1998
Creation of OIF
On April 20, 1998 Cisco Systems and Ciena Corporation announced
an industry-wide initiative to create the Optical Internetworking
Forum (OIF), an open forum focused on accelerating the deployment
of optical internetworks. The founding members of the forum were
AT&T, Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies), Ciena Corporation,
Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Qwest, Sprint and WorldCom.
The mission of the OIF would be to provide a venue for equipment
manufacturers, users and service providers to work together to
resolve issues and develop key specifications to ensure the interoperability
of optical networks.
First Meeting
The first formal membership meeting was held in June 1998 in Atlanta,
GA - USA, during the SuperComm tradeshow. At that time OIF had
sixty-six (66) members.
First Members-only Meeting
OIF held its first members-only meeting in September 1998 in San
Diego, California - USA. By then, membership had grown to ninety-two
(92).
1999
Working Groups
By January 1999 the following technical working groups were up
and running with official charters and chairs:
Architecture
Physical and Link Layer
OAM&P (Operations Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning)
First Annual Meeting
In June 1999, OIF held its First Annual Meeting, open to both members
and non-members. One hundred and fifty-five (155) attendees enjoyed
the presentation given by the keynote speaker, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf
on optical internetworking and the Internet, and participated in
the panel discussion led by OIF members on the evolution and key
challenges of high-speed data backbones.
2000
New Working Group
The Signaling Working Group was formed at the Q1 Technical and
MA&E Meetings held in New Orleans, Louisiana - USA.
Carrier Subgroup
At the Q2 Meeting in Montreal, Quebec - Canada, a special interest
group of carrier members was formed with the purpose of generating
a unified view of carrier requirements for specific OIF projects.
First Annual Industry Update
The OIF hosted its First Annual Industry Update during SuperComm
in Atlanta, Georgia - USA. Keynote speakers, Dr. John Ryan (RHK)
and John Sidgmore (MCI WorldCom/UUNET) presented to two hundred
eleven (211) OIF members and non-members. OIF Updates were given
by Carol Sensale (then OIF President, Telcordia Technologies) and
Joe Berthold (Technical Committee Chair, Ciena Corporation).
First European Meeting
The Q3 Technical and MA&E Meetings were held in Barcelona,
Spain with a record two hundred twenty-one (221) attendees, representing
ninety-five (95) member companies.
Implementation Agreements
The OIF Technical Committee produced five technical implementation
agreements by the end of the year:
- SPI-3 (OC-48 System Packet Interface)
- SFI-4 (OC-192 Serdes-Framer Interface)
- SPI-4 Phase 1 (OC-192 System Packet Interface)
- VSR-1 (OC-192 Very Short Reach Interface, 12 Fiber 850nm)
- VSR-2 (OC-192 Very Short Reach Interface, 1 Fiber 1310nm)
2001
Carrier Working Group Approved
The Carrier subgroup was approved as a formal working group at
the Q1 Technical and MA&E Meetings held in Tampa, Florida -
USA.
First Tradeshow
The OIF hosted its first info booth at the Optical Fiber Communication
Conference (OFC) in Anaheim, California - USA, March 19-21. It
was a great success with much foot traffic through the booth, especially
on the last day, due to attendees hearing about OIF in the conference
tracks and then seeking more information on the organization.
First Interoperability Demonstration
The OIF hosted the industry's first true multi-vendor, multi-technology,
interoperability demonstration of the Optical User-Network Interface
(UNI) at SuperComm 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia - USA. UNI will allow
data networking equipment to dynamically set up connections across
an optical network. A subset of the UNI draft specification that
includes connection control was selected for the demonstration.
Twenty-five (25) vendors successfully demonstrated interoperability
across a mesh of different devices.
Implementation Agreements
Implementation agreements produced this year:
- SPI-4 Phase 2 (OC-192 System Packet Interface)
- VSR-3 (OC-192 Very Short Reach Interface, 4 Fiber 850nm)
- VSR-4 (OC-192 Very Short Reach Interface, 1 Fiber 850nm)
- UNI 1.0 Signaling Specification (User Network Interface)
- SPI-5 (OC-768 System Packet Interface)
New Working Group
At the Q3 Technical and MA&E Meetings held in Vancouver, British
Columbia - Canada, the Interoperability Working Group was formed
with the purpose of facilitating the definition of testing methodologies
to validate conformance to implementation agreements and contribute
technical leadership for interoperability trials.
2002
Annual Event
The OIF held its Annual Event on March 21 in conjunction with the
Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in Anaheim, CA - USA. Keynote speaker
Dan Sheinbein (AT&T) presented on "Intelligent Optical
Networking." Another presentation was given by keynote speaker
Pedro Falcao (EBONE) on "Optical & IP Network Evolution
Strategy in the Backbone, Access and Edge." Sid Chaudhuri
(OIF President, Tellium) presented an OIF update while Steve Joiner
(OIF Technical Committee Chair, Ignis Optics) provided an update
on the Technical Committee.
Today...
The OIF continues to thrive with two hundred fifty (250) plus member
companies worldwide representing system vendors, service providers,
component suppliers, consultants and end users.
Our membership year runs from June 1 through May 31 with membership
fees prorated on a monthly basis. The OIF maintains strength in
numbers and active member participation clearly indicating the
relevance of the ongoing work within the Forum and its continued
success at fulfilling its mission.
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