Nokia Bell Labs and Vodafone’s Fixed Access Center of Excellence recently performed what it claims to be the world’s first demonstration of L4S running over PON in Vodafone’s lab in Newbury
Nokia and Vodafone announced they are currently collaborating to test the viability of L4S technology over passive optical networks (PON).
In a release, Nokia said the technology could improve the experience of residential customers engaged in everyday internet activities like video conferencing and gaming.
Nokia’s research arm Nokia Bell Labs and Vodafone’s Fixed Access Center of Excellence recently performed what it claims to be the world’s first demonstration of L4S running over PON in Vodafone’s lab in Newbury, in the U.K. The demonstration was performed on an end-to-end fixed access network built with Nokia technology. It consisted of a broadband network gateway (BNG), a PON optical line terminal (OLT), multiple PON optical network terminals (ONTs) as well as Wi-Fi access points. The Finnish vendor noted that the L4S tests showed extremely low and consistent end-to-end latencies.
Nokia also explained that the technology was pioneered by Nokia Bell Labs and stands for “Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable” throughput. It is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard technology that tackles a significant source of peak latency on the Internet which is queuing delays. Queuing delay happens when packets wait idly in buffers across the network, for instance in routers and modems, before being forwarded, the vendor said.
By eliminating queuing delays, L4S removes big variations in latency without compromising network speeds. In the lab tests, Vodafone and Nokia Bell Labs measured consistent latencies of 1.05ms at local Ethernet ports running over a fully congested access network (BNG to ONT), and just 12.1ms when including a fully congested Wi-Fi link as the final connection, Nokia said.
While the Vodafone and Nokia Bell Labs tests were conducted using PON networks, L4S can be implemented over any access technology, wireless or wireline and applied to any latency-dependent application, Nokia added.
Azimeh Sefidcon, head of network systems and security research, at Bell Labs, said: “These highly encouraging results show L4S will unshackle any real-time application that would normally be constrained by high latency. Videoconferencing, cloud-gaming, augmented reality and even the remote operations of drones would run flawlessly across the internet, without experiencing any significant queuing delays.”
“Vodafone aims to give customers a faster, more responsive, and reliable service unhindered by lag even during peak hours. L4S is an exciting technology with huge potential to achieve this goal, as well as deliver a more interactive and tactile internet experience for our customers,” said Gavin Young, head of Fixed Access Centre of Excellence at Vodafone.
In February, Finnish communications service provider Elisa and Nokia claimed to be the first to showcase 5G-Advanced L4S technology for real-time applications in congested network environments in the Nordics.
Nokia and Elisa explained that L4S technology helps 5G network users stream content seamlessly in congested radio network environments such as at concerts or sports events.
In 2022, L4S was adopted in 3GPP 5G-Advanced Release 18 to support Extended Reality (XR) over 5G networks.
The trial, which was held at the Nokia Arena in Tampere, Finland, utilized Nokia’s 5G AirScale portfolio over Elisa’s live 5G Standalone network.
