Panel -- Infocom 2003

Optical Networking: What is Its Future?

Wednesday, April 2, 2003
10:30 am - 12:00 noon
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
(5 Embarcadero Center)
http://www.ieee-infocom.org/2003/


Panel Organizer:
Biswanath Mukherjee
Department of Computer Science
University of California
Davis, CA 95616, USA
Tel:    +1-530-752-4826
Mobile: +1-530-400-9980
Fax:    +1-530-752-4767
Email:  mukherje@cs.ucdavis.edu
http://networks.cs.ucdavis.edu/~mukherje/

Panelists:
Chris Rust, CEO Mahi Networks
Raji Ramaswami, CTO, Optical Networking, Cisco
Hui Zang, Sprint Adavnced Technology Lab.
Young-chon Kim, Chonbuk National University, Korea
Biswanath Mukherjee, University of California, Davis


Today's unsettled telecom business climate provides us
a timely opportunity to debate the reasons behind its
past glory, present difficulties, and its future outlook.
Many people believe that it is a very important time to
continue to invest in telecom research and develop
appropriate technologies and engineering solutions to
meet and manage the (expected) growing bandwidth needs
of our information society over the next decade and beyond.
Optical networking--using wavelength-division multiplexing
(WDM)--is believed to be the technology of choice for
meeting these demands.  In the years ahead, it is believed
that there will continue to be a strong need for optical
network architectures and switching equipment (including
subsystems, devices, and materials) for efficiently
managing high-capacity optical signals.

Topics to be debated by the proposed panel will include,
but not be limited to, the following:

1. Telecom Business Models: Past, Present, and Future:
   (a) Inter-Exchange Carriers (IXCs)
   (b) Next-Generation National/Global Carriers
       (or Greenfield Networks (GNs))
   (c) National Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
   (d) Incumbent Local-Exchange Carriers (ILECs), Competitive
       Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), Carrier Hotels, etc.

2. Roles of Optics vs. Electronics vs. Software in intelligent
   network architectures

3. Access vs. Metro vs. Long-Haul Networks

4. Research Priorities and Challenges
   (a) bandwidth provisioning
   (b) next-generation switches
   (c) survivability
   (d) combatting physical-layer impairments
   (e) optical multicasting
   (f) optical packet/burst switching (OPS/OBS)
   (g) new breakthroughs needed and new technologies on the horizon
       -- materials, devices, subsystems

5. Will the investment climate return? and when?
   How is the climate internationally?