Experimental Evaluation of Server Centric Passive Optical Network Based Data Centre Architecture

TL;DR

This paper experimentally evaluates a server-centric PON-based data centre architecture, demonstrating high-speed, reliable data transmission over optical networks with live video streaming, highlighting scalability and energy efficiency benefits.

Contribution

It presents a novel implementation of a server-centric PON data centre architecture with integrated switching and routing, tested over long-distance optical links.

Findings

Successful live video streaming over 110 km optical links

High-speed, reliable data transmission demonstrated

Architecture shows potential for scalable, energy-efficient data centres

Abstract

Passive optical networks (PON) technology has recently been proposed as a solution for scalability, energy efficiency, high capacity, low cost, flexibility and oversubscription issues in data centres. This paper experimentally demonstrates and discusses the implementation of a server centric PON based data centre architecture with high speed and reliability. The architecture is set up using a set of servers grouped into racks directly connected together and to the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) through gateway servers. The switching and routing functionalities have been embedded into servers using 4x10GE Xilinx NetFPGA. Flow continuity has been observed through live video streaming using IP cameras transmitting over up to 110 km optical connections through WDM nodes and the PON network.