Design specifications for the ‘white box’ transponder and router contributed to Facebook Telecom Infra Project
Building on its Open Compute Project initiative to provide the larger data center ecosystem with open design specifications for hardware, Facebook this week contributed designs for its Voyager transponder and router to its Telecom Infra Project (TIP).
In February, during Mobile World Congress, Facebook announced the Telecom Infra Project, which is billed as “an engineering-focused initiative driven by operators, equipment providers, system integrators and other technology companies that aims to reimagine the traditional approach to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure.” It’s the same approach used with the Open Compute Project, a nonprofit founded in 2011 with the goal of reimagining the design of server, storage and other data center hardware with the goal of driving scalable computing through sharing of information and technical specifications.
Voyager is a networking solution for Open Pack DWDM (dense wave division multiplexing) networks, and it has been successfully tested by several partners.
Data center and colocation provider Equinix tested Voyager over 86 miles of production fiber, and operator MTN tested the solution on its fiber network in South Africa, according to Facebook. ADVA Optical Networking is offering the software support needed to deploy Voyager, and Coriant is working on routing, switching and transmission engineering support tools.
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“As the amount of global internet bandwidth required continues to grow, there is major emphasis on how to efficiently deploy fiber both within and between urban and rural areas,” Jay Parikh, Facebook’s global head of engineering and infrastructure, wrote in a recent blog post. “At Facebook, we believe that a key to efficiency is enabling open and unbundled solutions. To that end, our networking team has previously developed a series of projects aimed at breaking apart the hardware and software components of the data center network stack to open up more flexibility and accelerate innovation, as we previously did with our racks, servers, storage, and motherboards in the data center.”
He continued: “We have been working with partners to successfully test in the market and are excited about the ecosystem that has already come together around Voyager as part of TIP. Facebook, Acacia Communications, Broadcom, Celestica, Lumentum, and Snaproute are delivering a complete disaggregated hardware and software optical networking platform that is expected to significantly advance the industry.”
Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled its OpenCellular platform, a wireless access platform designed to work with 2G, 3G and LTE networks to provide low-cost voice and data connectivity to underserved populations.
Like OCP, TIP and the somewhat controversial Free Basics program, the social media giant is investing heavily in connectivity, presumably to grow its base of potential customers.