There is currently a worldwide shortage of 10Gbs optical components for manufacturing SONET OC-192 transponders. As a result, OC-192 interfaces for routers and DWDM equipment are very expensive and difficult to obtain. Carriers have estimated that about 75% of all SONET interfaces connect to other equipment in the same facility, with a link length of under 300m. The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has been working for over a year on Very Short Reach (VSR) OC-192 interfaces which trade link length for lower cost and better manufacturability.

Several technical approaches have been considered, including parallel optics, VCSEL lasers, relaxed optical parameters, and coarse WDM. The presentation will present in detail the characteristics of the leading approaches in order to show their advantages and disadvantages. It will probably make sense to adopt more than one. Input is sought from NANOG attendees on the best criteria to use in deciding which to adopt. The criteria of interest include maximum reach, type of fiber required, difference in cost, and difference in availability date.

This work is being done by the OIF's Physical and Link Layer Working Group (PLL WG). The OIF develops and publishes Implementation Agreements, rather than official standards. The first VSR Implementation Agreement is expected to be approved this fall. VSR line cards have already been demonstrated by multiple router vendors.

About the Presenter
Russ Tuck chairs the OIF's Physical and Link Layer Working Group, which is developing VSR Implementation Agreements. He is Systems Architect at Pluris Terabit Network Systems, where he helps lead the development of scalable and reliable core routers. He previously architected scalable database servers at Pyramid Technology, and scalable supercomputers at MasPar. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University and carried out his dissertation research at UNC Chapel Hill.