As the 5G Network will be capable of being reconfigured and optimized on-the-fly, they will also be more automated, requiring less manual effort to provision resources and make the most efficient use of bandwidth. The Ciena Analytics as a Service is a suite of tools to assist network operator in pro-active discovery on their network operations. This project will look at integrating new advanced intrepretable Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to tackle different challenging networking tasks (e.g. traffic prediction, anomaly detection, topology discovery, etc.).

Traditionally a Service Function Chain (SFC) consists of a set of dedicated network service boxes such as firewall, load balancers, and application delivery controllers that are concatenated together to support a specific service. With a new service, new devices must be installed and interconnected in certain order. This can be a very complex, time-consuming, and error-prone process, requiring careful planning of topology changes and network outages and incurring high OPEX.

Ciena is a Canadian company leader in engineering and manufacturing networking systems and devices. The company has around 5,000 operable products in its portfolio. The vast majority of Ciena products generate logs during the boot up and the mission mode operations from the various tasks running on their real time operating systems. The company wants thus to increase its software’s capabilities in order to be able to collect any type of log data generated in the production site and linked to other external information to extract actionable knowledge.

This project will address the production test needs of a silicon-based high-speed photonic transceiver solution for metro-reach terabit optical modems. For this project, the partnership will be between Ciena, DA Integrated (test development contractor) and Prof. Gordon W. Roberts from McGill University (academic expert in DFT and mixed-signal design and test).

Networks are moving towards being adaptive. This means that automation will be used to replace processes which are today highly manual. This project proposes a development of knowledge in the area of algorithms required to enable adaptive networks. The project will train two PhD students to understand optical networks and devise optimization algorithms in the areas of interest. In particular, the algorithms will be devised to be fast and near-optimal to enable their implementation in the network in accordance with operator’s goals of making the network near-optimal and adaptive.

Networks are moving towards being adaptive. This means that automation will be used to replace processes which are today highly manual. This project proposes a development of knowledge in the area of algorithms required to enable adaptive networks. The project will train two PhD students to understand optical networks and devise optimization algorithms in the areas of interest. In particular, the algorithms will be devised to be fast and near-optimal to enable their implementation in the network in accordance with operator’s goals of making the network near-optimal and adaptive.

Product documentation is an important information tool connecting any business to its end-users and customers. Comprehensive product documentation will likely result in positive evaluation of the products by the customers and may influence their future purchasing decisions. Many studies show product documentation remains an essential element of any new product even for modern electronic devices used for information and communication technologies.

The research will consist of exploring a new language as well as a new paradigm shift in the orchestration and analytics involved in operating a Fiber optical infrastructure equipped with IP routers and Computers. These computers will be equipped with programmable devices that will allow further instructions and detailing about the next generation of internet’s emerging services. These services require more automation and more analytics to become more adaptive if not autonomous. We will research how autonomous can these networks get by involving this new programmable language called P4.