Future broadband access networks are likely to be quite different from those we’re familiar with today. Most probably, they will consist of a fiber backbone and wireless “end links” to individual users. The fiber backbone is likely to be highly flexible, dynamic, adaptive to traffic, and based on both TDM and WDM technologies. The wireless “end links” are likely to be based on a derivative of Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, or 3G cellular networks.

These networks can evolve through several possible avenues including carrier-based PONs or hybrid fiber/coax networks; cell telephone networks; or their combinations. This evolution will require a significant R&D effort and major intellectual and financial investment, probably more significant than the investment that went into wide-area networks. It will also require new components, architectures and algorithms.

This talk will examine possible structure of future broadband access networks, likely evolution scenarios, and R&D issues that will need to addressed to make the new networks a reality.

Prof. Leonid G. Kazovsky joined Stanford University in 1990. He founded Photonics and Networking Research Laboratory (PNRL) at Stanford at that time and leads PNRL since then. Prior to joining Stanford, Prof. Kazovsky was with Bellcore (now Telcordia) doing research on WDM, high-speed and coherent optical fiber communication systems. While on Bellcore assignments or Stanford sabbaticals, Prof. Kazovsky worked at the Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany; Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories, Bristol, England; Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherland; and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy. Through research contracts, consulting engagements, and other arrangements, Prof. Kazovsky worked with many inductrial companies and U.S. Government agencies including Sprint, DEC, GTE, AT&T, IVP, Lucent, Hitachi, KDD, Furukawa, Fujitsu, Optivision, and Perimeter on the industrial side; and NSF, DARPA, Air Force, Navy, Army, and BMDO on the government side. Prof. Kazovsky also helped to launch several start-up companies in the Silicon Valley. Prof. Kazovsky serves or served on Editorial Boards of leading journals (IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Wireless Networks) and on Program Committees of leading conferences (OFC, CLEO, LEOS, SPIE, and GLOBECOM). He also served as a reviewer for various IEEE and IEE Transactions, Proceedings, and Journals; funding agencies (NSF, OFC, ERC, NRC, etc.) and publishers (Wiley, MacMillan, etc.). Prof. Kazovsky authored or co-authored two books, some 190 journal technical papers, and 265 conference papers. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of OSA.

Carrier Ethernet is an emerging service targeted at business-grade metroand wide area networking. It also has the potential to replace the time-division multiplexed PDH/SDH services that today provide access to other wide area networking services, such as frame relay and private IP services.

This talk will:

• Describe Carrier Ethernet and the market and technology initiatives that are driving its adoption;
• Examine the requirements that a Carrier Ethernet service places on the access network and the technology that is being architected and deployed to meet those requirements;
• Discuss technical challenges still to be addressed.

Dr. Kevin W. Schneider is a graduate of the University of Missouri – Rolla, now Missouri University of Science and Technology. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1992, he joined the ADTRAN technical staff where he has been involved with DSL development, and was part of the team that developed the world’s first commercial implementation of Trellis Coded Pulse Amplitude Modulation (TC PAM), the predecessor to today’s HDSL2 and SHDSL. He was a significant contributor to the Committee T1 standards in High Bit Rate Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL2 and 4) and Spectrum Management. He currently serves on the board of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solution (ATIS) where he has chaired the ATIS TOPS Council Optical Access Networks and IPTV Focus Groups, and established ATIS’ IPTV Interoperability Forum. As CTO, he leads the ADTRAN corporate technical staff, which is responsible for ADTRAN’s research activities, the creation and analysis of new technologies, and participation in industry-wide standards development organizations.