Hisham Sarwar
Recently the tech giant Facebook has revealed several details about its plans to take over the $500 billion telecom equipment market. Facebook has invented a computer network product and aims to share it openly with its audience. It also plans to design a wireless open source cellular network.
The network equipment known as optical switch is named as Voyager by Facebook. It is a white-box transponder and a routing device developed for open-packet DWDM optical networks. These networks are considered fast pace networks which help transmitting data with the use of light pulses instead of using the typical copper wires. This white box costs much less than the big brands.
Along with the Voyager device, Facebook is also giving away files for its Open Cellular project with the aim of producing a unique wireless ecosystem. According to the head of infrastructure and engineering at Facebook Jay Parikh, Facebook wants to create a more connected world with the help of technology. This innovative technology will be able to create more immersive experiences and will make it possible to connect the unconnected. With a lot of VR and video consumption around the world, everything requires better and faster networks. It is not easy to work in this sector as it has so many challenges. To overcome connectivity challenges in each market by developing new technologies require a complete understanding.
Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project, announced in February is based on all these issues. It is a reflection of the Uber-successful Open compute project which creates open source hardware for the data center. This is a place for engineers relating to different companies work together in order to develop new technology.
OCP is not anything new; it was developed five years ago. This technology inspired various internet companies such as LinkedIn to build all their data-center equipment and networks in the same way. Apple at first refused to join OCP but its entire team left the company. Later on Apple joined OCP.
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The team of engineers led by Jason Forrester has launched SnapRoute. It is open source network software that is based on its work at Apple. It is also a source of power for the Facebook’s new Voyager device. With the help of OCP, Facebook has now created its own servers, data-center racks, storage drives, as well as network switches.
After creating all this, Facebook’s new focus is the telecom equipment market. It is also fascinated with the merchants of this market such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Juniper, Fujitsu, Huawei, and others. It has already managed to take help from the big partners such as Equinix, a global data center company is operating with Facebook. It is testing the Facebook’s newly developed Voyager into its international data centers. This company can be helpful for encouraging other big companies to also use the new Voyager device.
In Seoul, South Korea, Facebook has also launched a telecom accelerator with the aim of encouraging people to make investments and launch tech startups. With the rate of success of OCP, TIP is also becoming a big attraction for the companies. Facebook has recently hosted an industry conference for its TIP members in order to reveal its new technical equipment. After this, around 300 big companies such as Bell Canada, NBN, du, Telstra, Accenture, Canonical, etc., have become a part of this project.
Via: Business Insider
