Cignal AI attended Cisco’s annual Packet Optical Networking Conference (PONC) at its optical headquarters in Richardson, TX on September 18th and 19th. The well-attended event featured customer testimonials, product and technology updates, and live demonstrations.
RON Goes Mainstream
Since its introduction more than five years ago and catalyzed by the acquisition of pluggable coherent optics pioneer Acacia, Cisco’s Routed Optical Networking architecture (aka RON) has become the centerpiece of the company’s transport messaging. In previous years’ PONCs, much of the content was devoted to reintroducing what is commonly known as IP-over-DWDM to a skeptical audience wary of the operational headaches and compromised performance that historically accompanied router-hosted DWDM optics. And while Cisco gave assurances that those obstacles would be overcome, RON promised more than just space and power savings, but a complete reimagining of the way transport (routing + optical) networks are built. Massive router capacity combined with pluggable coherent optics would collapse layers 0 to 3, and Service Provider network architectures would follow suit with router- and optics-intensive topologies, obviating the need for a highly complex optical layer and the dedicated equipment it requires.
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