This week, we attended Cisco’s Packet Optical Networking Conference 2024 (PONC 2024). The conference was mainly for partners and customers, and new products and architectures were the main discussion topics. A year ago, we concluded that Cisco’s Routed Optical Networks (RON) vision, where routers and pluggable coherent modules operate together to reduce the number of devices and operating costs of networks, has arrived. This year’s PONC conference was one step forward past 2023’s vision in that not a single participant at the conference questioned the value of collapsing routing and coherent equipment; instead, the focus was on faster speeds (800 Gbps, 1.6 Tbps), multi-vendor operations, and network automation. Most importantly, RON networks save money – numerous customer testimonials established that using 400 ZR on routers enabled significant capital and operational savings compared to traditional two-layer architectures. For instance, Colt’s spokesperson said it spends 90% less on power consumption using ZR architectures than older architectures.
Cisco’s product teams for routers, optical transport, and pluggable optics product lines presented their achievements for current products and expectations for future product deliveries. Following is a summary of the status of Cisco’s coherent pluggable timelines, covering three generations of products
- 400G ZR and ZR+. Available today with reaches of 1,000 km and “bright” capabilities, up to 1,400 km. Parenthetically, Cico’s 400G ZR shipments have been hitting all-time shipment records in the past couple of quarters.
- 800G ZR and ZR+. The company has already built its next-generation coherent pluggables for 800G ZR and ZR+, and these devices were available during lab demonstrations at this conference. Similarly, the company also 400G long-haul (LH) Pluggable, made from similar technologies as the 800G offering, and using a new DSP on the same power settings, it can reach 3,000 km. These pluggables use PCS technology, popular in optical transport systems a few years ago.
- 1.6 Tbps ZR and ZR+. The company targets 2026 availability for this pluggable class that requires 240 GBaud. The company explained that 1.6T ZR standards are still being processed and that the DSP chips require the advanced 2nm semiconductor process node.
Since the conference encompasses optical modules and addresses advancements in its routers and optical transport equipment, the teams also discussed current and future 1.6T advancements.
- Routers. In order to deliver 1.6 Tbps router ports, the company is working to deliver 224G SERDES, which will require 3nm or lower process nodes to handle the power requirements. Thus, Cisco will need new network processing units (NPUs). Cisco is working on 1.6 T products today and expects that for smaller boxes of this era, some can be air-cooled – these will be small pizza boxes. But, Cisco expects larger, denser systems to require liquid cooling using cold plates. Cisco is working with co-location customers to support liquid cooling infrastructures.
- Optical Transport. Like others in the optical transport industry, Cisco already delivers DWDM systems supporting 1.2 Tbps and beyond.
To summarize, Cisco’s PONC 2024 conference represented the consensus that its RON architecture is now mainstream.