Huawei Joins APOLAN to Promote All-Optical Campus Development

[Orlando, U.S., Feb.2, 2016] The annual conference of the global Association for Passive Optical LAN (APOLAN) has opened in Orlando, Florida, bringing together 32 enterprise members and media. Huawei, a world-leading information and communications technology (ICT) solution provider, today officially became an APOLAN member.

APOLAN is composed of equipment manufacturers, distributors, integrators, and consultancy companies among others. So far, APOLAN has grown into an association of 32 official members, with a global business reach. Under APOLAN's advocacy, the passive optical LAN (POL) solution has been widely adopted in regions such as North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific because of its excellent cost-effectiveness and high efficiency and, in particular, security and reliability. The POL solution has been applied to industries including education, government, enterprise, and communication.

The development of cloud computing, Internet, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has structurally changed the data traffic pattern of campus networks, where enterprise campus data centers are becoming a crucial piece of campus ICT systems. Traffic that used to be horizontally switched between PCs is now vertically switched between cloud terminals and cloud servers. In the meantime, services inside campuses are diversifying from basic voice and broadband services into a variety of richer content, including security surveillance, wireless access, and property management.

Traditional local area networks (LANs) are overstretched in meeting the communications demand of modern enterprises. Against this background, the passive optical network (PON) that has been widely applied to residences has been found to be closely aligned to such network requirements. In a PON network, the optical line terminal (OLT) centrally forwards and controls service traffic, and optical network units (ONUs) provide access for various types of terminals on the user side. By combining the characteristics of PON with enterprise LANs, a new solution is emerging, the all-optical campus POL.

The POL solution runs on a two-layer flattened network which is easy to manage and maintain, saves equipment room space as well as pipe resources; consumes less power; covers a longer distance with fibers, provides larger transmission bandwidth, delivers more types of services, and is exempt from oxidization and electromagnetic interference.

During the conference, Huawei demonstrated several end-to-end POL solutions. The industry-leading OLT that offers total disaster tolerance, innovative intelligent optical distribution network (iODN) solutions, and a full portfolio of ONU access terminals attracted a lot of attention. As a forerunner in the PON field, Huawei has leading technological advantages and vast experience of delivery around the world, which enables Huawei to provide complete end-to-end solutions. Joining APOLAN will empower Huawei to better promote the education and development of the POL industry.