Cumulus, Facebook Push Open Data Center Interconnect

Cumulus Networks said it launched an industry-first transponder abstraction interface to give transponder vendors more interoperability and make data center interconnect technology more open. The company made the announcement at this week’s Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Summit in London. It builds on Cumulus’ earlier work to make its open networking Linux operating system available on Voyager, a Facebook-designed, packet-optical transponder platform. This year Cumulus and telecommunication company NTT led an effort through TIP to develop the transponder abstraction interface (TAI). TAI defines an API for providing a uniform way to control transponders from various vendors. This removes the software development work for network OS vendors to support new hardware, and it allows chip vendors to take their products to market more easily with existing network software that can support them out of the box.