IOWN advances next-generation network evolution and innovation

Meeting sustainability goals

As well as supporting business agility to match bandwidth supply to service utilisation, the all-photonic networks also offer the opportunity to have infrastructure with lower power consumption per bit to meet sustainability goals and reduce energy costs. To display the crushing need to address the challenge, the Omdia research calculated that when measured in gigawatts, total global datacentre capacity – what the analyst called the key enabling infrastructure for AI capabilities – is set to grow 57% from 2024 to 2027.

The analyst concluded that APNs can potentially bring benefits to all audiences – from individuals and industry to international markets – and noted that the APN will build upon advances in optics technology that offer improved system reach capabilities, cost optimisation, enhanced optical switching, and advances in multi-layer and supplier management supported by the standards community. For enterprises in particular, it sees benefits for those firms looking for greater security, agility and return on investment for their AI and cloud adoption.

Fast forward to the Dallas conference in October, and the point was made that the optimal networks between datacentres will need to be more open and dynamic to support the sharing of computer resources, solving technology problems and moreover creating value for businesses.

The Dallas meeting was the first published event the forum had hosted to advance photonic technologies. It brought together over 240 attendees from more than 170 member organisations for a series of panels, presentations and technology showcases that demonstrated its global scope and latest advances in next-generation network evolution and innovation.

IOWN Global Forum president and chair Katsuhiko Kawazoe notes that since the association’s last public event in Stockholm, it had made “significant” progress.

“[We are] moving from proof-of-concept to proof-of-value, with completed PoCs now demonstrating real-world benefits,” he says. “We’ve also expanded early adoption use cases into remote construction and warehouse management … We’re focused on scaling to real-world deployment, developing reference models and strengthening industry partnerships.”

At the heart of these advances has been an evolution in the development of the APN, which the technology developers in the consortium say has reached the 2.0 stage. NTT’s Masahisa Kawashima, IOWN technology director and head of the technology working group at the IOWN Global Forum, tells Computer Weekly that over the past year, notable developments included work around multi-domain internet networking – enabling interconnection between private fibre networks – and a new packet forwarding architecture using a Hub and Spoke model. These moves are designed to improve efficiency and quality, supporting low latency and introducing deterministic quality of service.

“Multi-domain internet networking means that we can allow multiple organisations to operate their own APN networks and interconnect them to form a seamless network,” he says. “This is very important. Currently, many people are talking about the deployment of private fibre network. For example, datacentre providers will build private fibre networks to connect their distributed datacentre, but without inter-working technology, their optical networks will just form silos in the computing space. With our work, their private fibre networks will be interconnectable to form one computing space, and that would create huge value in this AI computing era.

“Also, we have defined a new architecture regarding the packet forwarding layer. Traditionally, packet networks used to consist of packet forwarding nodes, distributed geographically. But since we have an IOWN APN instead of distributed packet forwarding nodes, we can deploy a packet forwarding function in the cloud and implement a packet forwarding function in a hub and spoke architecture. This will allow us to improve the implementation of the packet forwarding function in terms of efficiency and also quality. For example, we can provide a packet forwarding service with deterministic quality of service and support new data transfer protocols such as RDMA. This has not been possible with today’s packet networks.”

Kawashima compares the latter capabilities to delivery firm FedEx, with its tracking of a packet at all stages from the moment it is sent to a customer. Deterministic quality means that, for example, latency delays can be bound to a specific value and the APN can assure that there would be no packet loss or packet reordering. A key use case for the assignation of a specific value for latency would be finance, where there is a legal requirement for specific minimum throughput speed for a legally recognised trade.

Looking at this application in greater depth, Kawashima adds that in this industry, finance firms have to deploy their transaction systems with databases that perform synchronous data replication, and in that, the latency between two database nodes should be very small. He observed that the use of the IOWN APN would fundamentally improve the performance of two databases being synchronised.

At its heart, the APN is all about ecosystems and is fundamentally built to allow for the use of geographically distributed components, offering the potential to use specifications from consortia like OpenROADM, a standard developed through collaborative work between carriers and vendors to create and promote an open, disaggregated and efficient optical networking ecosystem that allows for flexible, scalable and fully operational networks supporting various services and applications.

Adopting specifications

The IOWN approach is to take advantage of specifications defined by other consortia such as OpenROADM, as adopting such product specifications is helpful in deploying key components of the optical technology ecosystem. Kawashima sees OpenROADM as defining an open architecture. Traditionally, components are deployed in a single place and operated by a single organisation. The IOWN open APN takes advantage of the same components but allows them to be distributed geographically and operated by multiple organisations.

Other key applications considered include traffic control; using digital twins for more efficient management; network operations, particularly in the space of optical transport systems; and streaming video and TV.

The latter was exemplified clearly in May 2025 by Cho Kabuki, a theatre performance synchronising live and virtual performers in both Osaka, Japan and Taipei City, Taiwan using the APN. Even though the 100Gbps optical network between the two cities – created by NTT and Chunghwa Telecom – spanned around 3,000km, it boasted approximately 17ms one-way latency and 33.84ms round-trip time, with no jitter and stable communication.

The new APN was the product of an agreement signed between the two parties in October 2023, and is said to be based on Chunghwa Telecom and NTT’s strengths in optical and wireless transmission technologies, as well as both companies’ achievements in implementing these technologies. It links the Chunghwa Telecom headquarters in Taipei City and NTT’s Musashino R&D Centre in Japan.

Speaking on Cho Kabuki, and the most important lessons learned, Kawashima notes that for him, the standout was the latency of the connection, which made the performance of acceptable quality.

“We used to know that the latency was very important, and using fibres would help us reduce the latency,” he says. “But once we deployed the [APN], what we have found is that the very short latency would help us as if we were in the same place, even if we were remotely separated. I think one of the important findings of the latency [is that it can] help people understand the difference between traditional networks and the IOWN APN.”

AI support

He also believes that what will come next will be another similar project with Chunghwa or another partner attracted by the live streaming use case, and also support for the world of AI.

“I’m expecting that many organisations would consider building a new venue – like a stadium or musical hall – connected with IOWN APN so that the performance there can be live streamed over the IOWN APN,” says Kawashima. “But also [while] the deployment of financial service datacentres is one thing, another thing is remote GPU [graphics processing units]. Many nations are talking about sovereign AI, building an AI computing infrastructure for their country to keep their industry competitive [as regards] global competition.

“One of the important points is how to achieve global sustainability, [and] what we could do with IOWN APN is deploy an AI computing datacentre in rural areas where renewable energy is abundant and connect such areas with downtowns or suburbia where many industries have their R&D campuses. This is what we can do with IOWN APN, because IOWN APN provides high bandwidth, load, agency and transport.”

In part two of our look at the work of the IOWN project, we find out what use cases the association has been working on and when they are likely to come to fruition.