Industry Expert Blogs

Anyone familiar with the specifications of telecom protocols will recognize that they are both detailed and complex. So it is surprising -- especially given the revelations of whistle blowers such as Edward Snowdon and the current cyber security fixation -- that the Optical Transport Network (OTN) does not inherently feature any encryption.

The OTN's evolution has seen the successful inclusion of Ethernet packets into the payload. Originally, the OTN was designed to transport SONET/SDH, but it has been adapted to work with the faster Ethernet standards.

There is growing interest among equipment vendors in the notion of adding encryption to provide privacy and tamper detection on OTN systems with minimal added latency. The growing use of networks for applications such as financial transactions is a key driver for this technology.

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