OpenOptics: Democratizing Optical DCNs

OpenOptics: Democratizing Optical DCNs#

Easy design, testing, and deployment of optical DCNs for everyone.

Note

  • The OpenOptics paper has been accepted by NSDI’26!

OpenOptics is a general framework for realizing different optical data center network architectures in a plug-and-play manner. With OpenOptics, users can deploy customized optical data center networks on the testbed, emulation, or simulation with ~10 lines of Python code. Under the hood, user configurations are translated into table entries and control plane programs, which are then deployed to the underlying optical and P4-programmable switches.

from openoptics import Toolbox, OpticalTopo, OpticalRouting

nb_node = 8
net = Toolbox.BaseNetwork(nb_node = nb_node, time_slice_duration_ms = 512, backend="Mininet")
circuits = OpticalTopo.round_robin(nb_node=nb_node)
net.deploy_topo(circuits)
paths = OpticalRouting.routing_direct(net.get_topo())
net.deploy_routing(paths)
net.start()

After deployment, users can monitor the network with OpenOptics Dashboard.

OpenOptics Dashboard

We have now published the Mininet backend, where users can realize optical DCNs in a full software emulation using BMv2 software switches and Mininet networks. The Tofino-based backend will be released soon.

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