Alibaba Cloud Presents Two ECOC 2022 Papers on SONiC‑Based White‑Box Optical Network OS and Flexible‑Grid Spectrum Optimization

From September 18‑22, 2022, the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) was held in Basel, Switzerland, where Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure network team had two papers accepted and presented at a workshop, reflecting the team's sustained research efforts.

The first paper, titled “SONiC‑based Network Operating System for Open White‑box Optical Transport Equipment,” introduces the industry’s first open‑source‑based white‑box optical network operating system built on SONiC, aiming to decouple hardware and software and support rapid growth in high‑performance computing and big‑data workloads.

The article explains the broader trend toward white‑box networking, describing how Alibaba Cloud’s self‑developed white‑box switches have been widely deployed in data centers and how the team actively contributes to open‑source communities such as SONiC and ODCC.

Building on this foundation, the second paper, “Demonstration of Hitless Spectrum Optimization in a Flexgrid Disaggregated System,” details an algorithm and control design that extend the tuning range of 400ZR‑DCO modules to ±40 GHz, enabling loss‑less rearrangement and reuse of spectrum fragments in a flexible‑grid system. This technology was demonstrated live at ECOC.

The report also highlights a workshop titled “Optical Networks – Will they destroy the planet or save humanity,” where Alibaba Cloud argued that optical networks can reduce data‑center energy consumption by leveraging low‑power transmission and high‑bandwidth, low‑latency characteristics to improve resource pooling.

Overall, Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure network team emphasizes open‑source innovation, collaborative research, and the potential of optical networking to support greener, more efficient data‑center operations, while committing to further advances in open‑source optical network technologies.