The Optical Network Design and Modelling (ONDM) international conference is a respected forum that brings together researchers, engineers, and practitioners in the design and modeling of optical networks. The ONDM congress covers cutting-edge research in established areas such as optical networking, optical systems, as well as emerging topics such as novel Internet architectures, new optical network architectures for the cloud/data center, wireless optical networks, photonic integrated networks, and SDN-NFV developments in optical networks.
ONDM was founded in 1997 in Vienna, Austria. The following annual editions were held in different cities around the world, expanding the topics at the same pace as the research in optical networks advanced. The number of editions of this international conference is a sign of its quality and appreciation among the scientific community. The 20th edition of the ONDM conference, technically sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society, was held 9–12 May 2016 at the School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSIT), Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT), in Cartagena, Spain. The local organization was run by Engineering Group Telecommunications Network (GIRTEL, http://girtel.upct.es) of the UPCT.
During the four days of the conference, the attendees participated in various scientific activities such as the work presentation sessions, the workshop “Big Data for Networking: Opportunities, Challenges and Requirements,” as well as the workshop “Elastic Networks Design and Optimization,” which included several interesting tutorials. Following the conference tradition, ONDM 2016 was a single-track event, and their 39 presentations were arranged in 11 sessions.
Similar to their last editions, ONDM 2016 gathered participants from more than 25 countries, from all continents, with more representation from Europe, Asia, and North America. The internationality of the conference is made evident also by the plurinational representation in its Technical Committee, and the presence of its members in other prestigious international forums.
Papers presented in the conference were subject to a rigorous selection process of peer review, carried out primarily by members of the conference Technical Program Committee, with an acceptance rate below 50%. Authors of papers accepted for the conference were invited to submit an extended version of their paper to a Special Issue dedicated to ONDM 2016 in the prestigious IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking. The editors of this special issue are Massimo Tornatore (Politecnico di Milano, Italy), Nina Skorin-Kapov (University Centre of Defence, Spanish Air Force Academy, Spain), and Pablo Pavón Mariño (Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Spain).
The conference included four extraordinary keynote talks at the start of each of the four days, given by Juan Pedro Fernández Palacios (Telefonica), Josue Kuri (Facebook), Leonid Kazovsky (Stanford University), and Jane M. Simmons (Monarch Network Architects). The keynotes covered exciting new trends in optical networking, such as the expected evolution of the metro, the planning of the networks interconnecting large datacenters, or the use of novel quasi-passive optical devices for creating rearrangeable topologies in access networks.
As conference organizers, we were happy to receive very positive feedback from the attendees, who highlight the high reputation of the conference, the friendly atmosphere, single track that encourages scientific interactions among attendees and presenters, and the high quality of the works. These are the distinctive features of ONDM, which will surely be continued and expanded in the next edition, ONDM 2017 in Budapest (Hungary).