Nokia and Vodafone conduct world’s first trial of L4S technology over an end-to-end PON network

Nokia and Vodafone announced they are collaborating to test the viability of L4S technology over passive optical networks (PON), which could greatly 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 the world’s first demonstration of L4S running over PON in Vodafone’s lab in Newbury, 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) and WiFi access points.

The tests showed extremely low and consistent end-to-end latencies when travelling across every element of the network. Pioneered by Nokia Bell Labs, L4S 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: queuing delays. Queuing delay happens when packets wait idly in buffers across the network, for instance in routers and modems, before being forwarded.