Center for Integrated Access Networks

The Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN) focuses on enabling end-user access to emerging real-time, on-demand, high-data-rate network services, anywhere and at any time, at low cost and with high energy effi­ciency. This drives a need for scalable, optically-based aggregation systems to collect and redistribute traf­fic across the globe. The CIAN effort is examining this problem from a broad perspective, including network architectural and network element functionality bot­tlenecks, and new enabling subsystems, devices, and materials. Recognizing current and emerging bottlenecks in networks to support emerging mobile, video, and other forms of content delivery, the Center adapts the aggregation vision into two distinct yet pervasive en­vironments:

• Data centers, with homogeneous localized ser­vices; and
• Multi-service aggregation networks that address heterogeneous systems, including wireline and wireless.