The network of the future can and must be different on many fronts. Currently, telecom operators are still using too much energy. To remain interesting for future applications, a higher transmission capacity and lower latency are also needed. Red Hat’s CTO, Chris Wright, is committed to addressing all these points through the IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) Global Forum initiative. We spoke with him about the future network.
IOWN is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. This worldwide project is working on an all-photonics network that promises to be largely operational by 2030. The figures are promising. They strive for 100 times less energy consumption, 125 times higher bandwidth, and 200 times lower latency. That these results are achievable has already been partly proven. Concrete results can already be seen via long-distance connections.
What exactly is IOWN?
Here on Techzine, we have not yet focused extensively on IOWN, but the telecom initiative is becoming increasingly relevant. It was launched at its inception as the answer to the anticipated increase in data consumption within networks, the growth in the number of data sources such as sensors, and the expectation that AI would make increasing use of this infrastructure. At the launch, a concern was that the energy consumption of telecom networks – already responsible for 2 to 3 percent of global electricity consumption – would increase significantly due to 5G implementations.
The IOWN Global Forum was founded in Japan and focuses on creating a new type of network based entirely on photonic technology. Where traditional networks only use optical fiber connections at endpoints, IOWN wants to extend this technology to data centers, servers, and ultimately even chips.
An essential part of this vision is the concept of a composable, or disaggregated, infrastructure. In this approach, computer resources such as memory, CPUs, and GPU accelerators are dynamically allocated to specific tasks. This is in contrast to the current situation, in which servers are often oversized for specific use cases, leading to inefficient energy consumption.
Community-driven innovation
Wright indicates that building a community was one of the biggest challenges at the start of IOWN. “Creating awareness and bringing people together was our first challenge,” says the CTO of Red Hat. The open source company joined the IOWN Global Forum shortly after its founding and saw a good match in improving technology through collaboration and community. The forum currently has more than 150 members, including all the major telecom players and relevant tech companies.
Another challenge was motivating stakeholders to take action for a vision that will not be fully realized for another ten years. IOWN’s approach is therefore aimed at taking small, iterative steps that each show progresses on its own – an approach that Red Hat recognizes from the open-source world as “release early, release often”.
This approach ensures that the project can move along with technological developments and market trends instead of working in isolation for ten years on a solution that may no longer meet real needs.
Concrete results after five years
Although it is a long-term project, it is already halfway through. After five years, you would expect to see some tangible test results or even some operational results. Wright refers to the successful result of IOWN members NTT and ChungHwa Telecom at the end of last year. They activated the first international IOWN APN gateway via an all-photonics network connection between Musashino and Taipei. The latency between these two points was very low, and the connection was stable, with only 17 milliseconds over 3,000 kilometers. Although it is one-way traffic, this is an unprecedented speed.
IOWN needs such implementations to achieve the 2030 goals. These proof of concepts not only demonstrate the technology but also help define open-source projects, standards, and even product-oriented roadmaps.
Energy consumption must be reduced
An important goal of IOWN is to stabilize and ultimately reduce telecom networks’ energy consumption. The first step is to prevent the current consumption of two to three percent of global electricity from increasing further due to the rollout of 5G and other newer telecom technologies. The next step is to lower that percentage.
In addition to reducing energy consumption by using photonic instead of electronic components, IOWN also offers opportunities for smarter data center placement. The high bandwidth and low latency allow computationally intensive facilities to be placed closer to green energy sources without compromising network performance.
The network is changing
Another important development is the arrival of 6G networks, which the telecom sector is currently defining. Although the exact details of 6G have not yet been finalized, it is expected to be an evolution comparable to how 3G introduced data traffic and 4G made it mainstream.
“5G lays the foundation for edge computing and applications such as smart factories and smart cities, but these are not yet the norm. They are still being discussed as something for the future rather than the current state of affairs,” says Wright. “I expect that with 6G these applications will become the norm and everyone will use the network that way,” says Wright.
IOWN also facilitates the development of photonic-electronic convergence: chips that combine traditional electronic switching technology with photonic components. This enables a gradual transition from the current infrastructure to the future infrastructure without the need for a complete replacement of all equipment.
Momentum until 2030
Over the next five years, IOWN will continue to expand use cases and POCs and introduce the technology into practical situations. Now that momentum has been built up, the expectation is that the second five years of the project will show more activity than the first five years.
“We are following that standard growth curve, where things slow down initially and then pick up speed as momentum builds. I expect more activity in the second five years than in the first,” the Red Hat CTO explains.
With five years to go until the original deadline of 2030, IOWN remains an ambitious project that could change the world of telecommunications. Not only through the technical gains of higher speeds and lower latency, but especially through a drastic reduction in energy consumption. Something that is also necessary with the current footprint of telecommunications.
Also read: Red Hat: “Lack of code visibility is haunting companies”