Photonic Systems Brown Bag Seminar Series

Thursday, February 15, 2007

11:30  am, RLE Haus Conf. Room 36-428

"Characterizing Cost in Fiber-to-the-Home Networks"

Thomas Rand-Nash

As the demand for broadband communications continues to expand and the technologies for satisfying that demand continue to evolve, access network operators are confronted with a host of challenging questions surrounding network design and deployment.  These questions are particularly relevant to the new FTTx passive optical networks (PON):

• How should the network be constructed?
• What component technologies should be employed?
• Can any given network architecture serve today’s needs while providing flexibility for the future?
• How much will network performance cost?
• What are the tradeoffs between architectural and component choices and CapEx     and OpEx costs?

Ultimately, any service provider is trying to identify a network design that allows them to both profitably serve their customers today and adapt to future changes in the market.   This talk will both discuss the operation and capabilities of network cost models and present some preliminary results.