OIF has launched a new Flex Ethernet (FlexE) project, FlexE 2.1, at its recently concluded meetings in Sydney, Australia. The interoperability enablement group also elected new organization and working group leaders, including a new president.
As its name implies, FlexE enables more flexible transmission of Ethernet streams, particularly in instances where client-side input transmission rates don’t match with line side optical transport rates (see “OIF finishes Flex Ethernet Implementation Agreement”). OIF has been the home of FlexE specification development and recently released the FlexE 2.0 Interoperability Agreement (IA) that covers 100, 200, and 400 Gigabit Ethernet applications (see "OIF launches Flex Ethernet projects, January 2017 workshop"). Flex 2.1 will build on this work to specify a 50-Gbps FlexE frame and multiplexing format as well as address applications with lower bandwidth needs. The work is seen as applicable to future 5G mobile network support.
“There is continued demand by data center and network operators for a solution for flexible deployment and provisioning of Ethernet bandwidth,” said Dave Ofelt, Juniper Networks and OIF Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Working Group – Protocol vice chair. “Building on OIF’s great work for FlexE and FlexE 2.0, this new FlexE 2.1 project will ultimately result in a single IA that adds n×50-Gbps support to FlexE 2.0, along with other possible feature enhancements.”
Also at the Sydney sessions, which took place October 29-November 2 and included both the Q418 Technical and Marketing Awareness and Education (MA&E) Committee meetings, OIF members elected Nathan Tracy of TE Connectivity as the organization’s president. He succeeds Nokia’s Dave Brown, who has become OIF communications director.
“I am thrilled and honored to serve as president of the OIF for the coming year,” said Tracy. “This is an exciting time in the industry and OIF has an important role to play with the interoperability solutions that are both in-process and yet to come. I congratulate all the other members who are newly elected to the board of directors and other leadership positions.”
Election results included the a mix of returning and new Board members:
- Tracy was re-elected to the Board as well as appointed as president
- Tad Hofmeister, Google, vice president
- Martin Bouda, Fujitsu, re-elected to the Board and appointed secretary/treasurer
- Mike Li, Intel, elected to the Board
- Cathy Liu, Broadcom Inc., re-elected to the Board
- Gary Nicholl, Cisco, elected to the Board
- Ian Betty, Ciena, continues to serve on the Board.
The roster of officers inclues:
- Klaus-Holger Otto, Nokia, re-elected Technical Committee chair
- Ed Frlan, Semtech, re-elected Technical Committee vice chair
- Tom Issenhuth, Huawei Technologies, elected MA&E Committee co-chair, Physical and Link Layer (PLL)
- Lyndon Ong, Ciena, re-elected MA&E Committee co-chair, Networking
- Brown as communications director.
In addition, Jia He of Huawei Technologies was elected Network & Operations Working Group chair and Jeff Maki of Juniper Networks was re-elected as Physical Layer User Group Working Group chair.
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