Data Center Networking

- The Role of Network in Today's Data Center

Data centers (DCs), owing to the exponential growth of Internet services, have emerged as an irreplaceable and crucial infrastructure to power this ever-growing trend. A data center typically houses a large number of computing and storage nodes, interconnected by a specially designed network, namely, data center network (DCN). The DCN serves as a communication backbone and plays a pivotal role in optimizing data center operations., as it interconnects all of the data center resources together. DCNs need to be scalable and efficient to connect tens or even hundreds of thousands of servers to handle the growing demands of Cloud computing. Today's data centers are constrained by the interconnection network.

We’re facing a future where 5G, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence and IoT are transforming technology and cabling infrastructure. These technologies are quickly taking data volume and data rates to levels we’ve never seen before. Data centers are experiencing revolutions, too, so they can keep up with increased connectivity and the bandwidth demands of these new technologies and applications. Data traffic volume is rising when it comes to internal data center traffic, traffic entering and exiting the data center, mobile traffic, enterprise IT data and more.

- The Future of Fiber Optics in The Data Center

Today’s data centers need to be fast, dense, scalable, cost effective and energy efficient. For these reasons, speeds are transitioning from 40G to 100G and emerging 400G Ethernet technologies. (Although 400G links aren’t widely deployed yet, adoption will grow quickly in the coming years to ensure ultra-fast, high-performing data centers.) As data center speeds increase, cable performance becomes increasingly critical to ensure link quality – which is why data center fiber is becoming crucial.

Fiber cabling is the only network infrastructure solution that can support data rates of 50G and beyond; therefore, the equipment responsible for transporting and carrying signals will rely on data center fiber. Fiber is becoming the go-to option for data center architecture because it offers greater bandwidth and error-free transmission over longer distances and is immune to noise (EMI/RFI). Its smaller size and weight (as compared to copper cables) mean it takes up less space in cable trays, raised floors and racks, allowing for maximized usage data center square footage.

- Think Globally, Surf Locally?

The Internet and globalization belong together. Since the Web revolutionized communication, the world has been shrinking and converging faster and faster. And yet, precisely to support the future development of the Internet, we need to think more locally. Applications like Virtual Reality (VR) and 8K content require increasingly large data volumes, but at the same time demand increasingly low latencies. 

For VR applications, these lie in the range of 20 milliseconds - to put that in perspective, the blink of an eye takes 150 milliseconds. If we wish to implement such applications on a broad scale, physics forces us to bring the data closer to the user. Since Albert Einstein, we know that nothing in the universe can move faster than light - meaning data can’t either. The enormous speed of 300,000,000 meters per second would still be too slow to host VR content in the USA and play it in Germany without experiencing judder. 

In the past 10 years, the structure of the Internet has already changed - providers already have their own equipment for caching content in the networks that serve end-customers, and in this way they bring their data closer to the consumer. What is happening today in regional telecommunication hubs like (New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco) would also need to be expanded in terms of area and density, also in rural areas, for large-scale VR usage, e.g. in autonomous vehicles.