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OIF Q2 2025 Technical and MA&E Committees Meeting Advances Critical Projects and Technical Collaboration, Highlights FlexE 3.0 and Coherent CMIS 1.4 Progress

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The meeting featured a guest speaker from Telia Estonia, and Jia He was re-elected as Networking & Operations Working Group Chair

Fremont, Calif. — OIF, where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done, held its Q2 2025 Technical and Market Awareness & Education Committees Member Meeting May 5-8, 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. 

The meeting advanced technical specifications and key projects essential to scaling next-generation networks, highlighted progress on related implementation agreements and featured guest speaker Tarko Tikan of Telia Estonia. It also featured a recap of OIF’s interoperability demo at OFC 2025, highlights from the 448Gbps Signaling for AI Workshop, and discussion around the upcoming ECOC interoperability demo, building on the success and momentum from OFC.

Key project updates include:

C-CMIS 1.4 Implementation Agreement (IA): The latest update to the C-CMIS IA introduces expanded support for coherent interfaces,  including enhanced maintenance/replacement signal control, enhanced consequent action control, payload type support, additional alarming, CD target set and a new CDB command to display Coherent Application Attributes. These updates strengthen interoperability for ZR and ZR+ modules at 400G, 800G and beyond, laying the groundwork for managing a broader class of coherent pluggable modules.

FlexE 3.0 Implementation Agreement (IA): Building on previous IAs, FlexE 3.0 supports Flex Ethernet Groups composed of 800G Ethernet PHYs and introduces 100G calendar slots and payload type overhead. These features address growing demands in high-capacity transport and hyperscale environments, increasing flexibility and enabling scalable Ethernet service delivery.

In addition, OIF announced that presentations from its recent 448Gbps Signaling for AI Workshop—featuring perspectives from hyperscalers, analysts and member companies driving next-gen electrical signaling—are now publicly available on its website. The workshop, held April 15–16 in Santa Clara, provided a comprehensive look at the ecosystem readiness and future direction of 448G, with robust participation and insight from across the industry, and is directly driving work within OIF moving forward.

“As network requirements evolve and grow more complex, OIF’s collaborative environment is where real, measurable progress happens,” said OIF Officer and Technical Committee Vice Chair Sam Kocsis (Amphenol). “Our member meetings are designed to accelerate technical consensus and ensure alignment across the ecosystem.”

In Technical Committee updates, Jia He (Huawei) was re-elected as Chair of the Networking & Operations Working Group.

The meeting also featured guest speaker Tarko Tikan of Telia Estonia, who shared insights into Telia’s approach to building a resilient, autonomous and secure national network. Tikan outlined the company’s transition to a fully converged IP/MPLS infrastructure, highlighted Telia’s strong cybersecurity posture—including fully isolated management systems—and emphasized Estonia’s ability to implement agile, standards-based network strategies tailored for national resilience.

“It was an honor to join OIF as a guest speaker and share Telia Estonia’s perspective on building secure and resilient networks,” Tikan said. “Normally, I just work with what OIF has specified—but this time, I had the chance to sit in on a Working Group meeting and see that process in action. It gave me a new level of respect for the expertise and collaboration that drive OIF’s work.”

About OIF
OIF is where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done. With more than 25 years of effecting forward change in the industry, OIF represents the dynamic ecosystem of 160+ industry leading network operators, system vendors, component vendors and test equipment vendors collaborating to develop interoperable electrical, optical and control solutions that directly impact the industry’s ecosystem and facilitate global connectivity in the open network world. Connect with OIF on LinkedIn, on X, on Bluesky and at https://www.oiforum.com/.

PR Contact:
Leah Wilkinson
Wilkinson + Associates for OIF
leah@wilkinson.associates
703-907-0010

OIF Unveils CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 Extended Extra Short Reach Implementation Agreement, Paving the Way for Advanced Interconnectivity

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Organization also releases C-CMIS IA, publishes AI network operations and 400ZR+ demo white papers and announces next CMIS webinar

Fremont, Calif. – OIF, where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done, has published a new Implementation Agreement (IA) for Common Electrical I/O (CEI) CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 Extended Extra Short Reach.

The CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA specifies a 112 Gb/s PAM4 electrical interface for die-to-die (D2D) and die-to-optical-engine (D2OE) interconnect with bump-to-bump insertion loss up to 13 dB at the Nyquist frequency and baud rate in the range 36 Gsym/s to 58 Gsym/s. The intended applications encompass multiple-chip modules (MCM), co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-package optics (NPO) assemblies. It also details the requirements for the CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 extended extra short reach high-speed electrical interface with nominal baud rates between 36 Gsym/s and 58 Gsym/s using PAM4 modulation.

“The CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA represents a significant milestone, extending the reach of previously published XSR class specifications at this speed range,” said David Stauffer, OIF Physical and Link Layer Working Group Chair and Kandou Bus, S.A. “This IA empowers advanced interconnectivity solutions in die-to-die and die-to-optical-engine scenarios, supporting baud rates up to 112 Gb/s (58 Gsym/s). These specifications have the opportunity to revolutionize multiple-chip modules, co-packaged optics, and near-package optics applications, pushing the boundaries of high-speed data transmission.”

Matt Brown, editor of the CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA and Alphawave Semi, added, “The CEI-112G-XSR+-PAM4 IA addresses a gap in the set of OIF CEI specifications to address new applications identified by the diverse membership of the OIF.”

OIF also recently released the Coherent Common Management Interface Specification (C-CMIS) IA 1.3, published an Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Enhanced Network Operations technical white paper, published the ECOC 400ZR+ demo white paper and launched a series of CMIS technical webinars.

C-CMIS IA 1.3: This Implementation Agreement extends the Common Management Interface Specification [CMIS] to allow the management of digital coherent optics (DCO) modules. Initially covering 400ZR modules, this IA supports the management of modules that have a single data path with an eight-lane host interface for a 400GBASE-R Ethernet signal and a single-lane 400G coherent media interface based on the 400ZR specification. Future extensions to accommodate other DCO modules are anticipated.

Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Enhanced Network Operations Technical White Paper: This new white paper addresses the interoperability requirements for enhanced network functions that interface between transport networks and their management-control systems. It identifies various use cases for applying AI to guide interoperability and provides insights into data requirements, processing needs, output specifications and interfaces relevant to each use case.

ECOC 400ZR+ Demo White Paper: This paper presents the methodology and results of an interoperability study of OpenZR+ MSA QSFP-DD transceivers conducted during the ECOC 2023 plugfest. Ten different transceivers were cross-connected in a matrix of transmitter-to-receiver combinations using a noise-loaded link to characterize the penalties associated with supplier interoperability. Individual transceiver performance was tested using 400GE traffic over a shortened optical line system link with a DWDM 75GHz fixed channel grid and a separate configuration to capture the transmitter error vector magnitude (EVM) performance. The transceiver receiver OSNR performance is compared against the transceiver transmitter EVM performance for each vendor.

CMIS Technical Webinar Series: OIF is hosting a series of free, public CMIS tutorial webinars. The next webinar, “Data Path State Machine (DPSM) and Application Advertising,” will be held on February 7th. These webinars aim to equip engineers, developers and industry professionals with a comprehensive understanding of CMIS. More information on the series can be found here.

 

About OIF

OIF is where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done. With more than 25 years of effecting forward change in the industry, OIF represents the dynamic ecosystem of 150+ industry leading network operators, system vendors, component vendors and test equipment vendors collaborating to develop interoperable electrical, optical and control solutions that directly impact the industry’s ecosystem and facilitate global connectivity in the open network world. Connect with OIF at @OIForum, on LinkedIn and at http://www.oiforum.com.

 

PR Contact:

Leah Wilkinson

Wilkinson + Associates for OIF

leah@wilkinson.associates

703-907-0010

OIF Completes Coherent Common Management Interface Specification (C-CMIS) Implementation Agreement for Management of Digital Coherent Optics (DCO) Modules

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Initial release is focused on supporting 400ZR

Fremont, Calif.—March 3, 2020 – OIF, where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done, today announced the completion of the Coherent Common Management Interface Specification (C-CMIS) Implementation Agreement (IA). This IA serves as an extension to the CMIS (QSFP-DD/OSFP/COBO) management specification, specifically targeting DCO modules.

“The C-CMIS IA is an important part of the developing 400ZR ecosystem,” said Ian Betty, Ciena and OIF Board Member. “It defines additional management registers, and monitors, together with new functionality, mechanisms, or behaviors, as needed.”

Augmenting the existing CMIS specification which focused on addressing direct detect client optics, the C-CMIS IA provides register definition for coherent modules in pages and parameters that were previously reserved. Users that have previously implemented software to manage optical modules using CMIS will be able to quickly add support for these coherent pages and parameters. This release of the C-CMIS IA is targeted at the 400ZR application.

The technology and complexity of coherent modules requires additional monitoring parameters for use in field applications. This additional monitoring is primarily focused on Forward Error Correction (FEC) monitoring and optical/analog monitoring including items like Chromatic Dispersion, Differential Group Delay and Electrical Signal to Noise Ratio (eSNR). The C-CMIS IA provides specifications to monitor the standard parameters in a normative manner while taking advantage of the flexibility of the CMIS specification to monitor any additional proprietary parameters.

“The current IA is focused on supporting the OIF 400ZR IA, which supports a single data path with eight-lane host electrical interface for a 400GBASE-R PCS signal and a single-lane 400G coherent media interface (with a new signal format called 400ZR),” explained Betty. “However, we expect future versions to include more complex Metro modules and may even extend these management features to other form factors.”

 

About OIF

OIF is where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done. Building on 20 years of effecting forward change in the industry, OIF represents the dynamic ecosystem of 100+ industry leading network operators, system vendors, component vendors and test equipment vendors collaborating to develop interoperable electrical, optical and control solutions that directly impact the industry’s ecosystem and facilitate global connectivity in the open network world. Connect with OIF at @OIForum, on LinkedIn and at http://www.oiforum.com .

 

PR Contact:

Leah Wilkinson

Wilkinson + Associates for OIF

Email: leah@wilkinson.associates

Office: 703-907-0010