TIP seeks to shake up the telecom marketplace

The telecom industry has long recognised the benefits of the Internet content providers' data-centre work practices. It has led to the operators starting to embrace software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) technology whereby telecom functions that previously required custom hardware are executed as software on servers.

 Niall Robinson

Now, ten telcos, systems vendors, component and other players have joined Facebook as part of the Telecom Infra Project, or TIP, to bring the benefits of open-source design and white-box platforms to telecoms. TIP has over 300 members and has seven ongoing projects across three network segments of focus: access, backhaul, and core and management. 

Facebook's involvement in a telecoms project is to benefit its business. The social media giant has 1.79 billion active monthly users and wants to make Internet access more broadly available. Facebook also has demanding networking requirements, both the linking of its data centres and supporting growing video traffic. It also wants better networks to support emerging services using technologies such as virtual reality headsets.

It is time to disrupt this closed market; it is time to reinvent everything we have today

The telecom operators want to collaborate with Facebook having seen how its Open Compute Project has created flexible, scalable equipment for the data centre. The operators also want to shake up the telecom industry. At the inaugural TIP summit held in November, the TIP chairman and CTO of SK Telecom, Alex Jinsung Choi, discussed how the scale and complexity of telecom networks make it hard for innovators and start-ups to enter the market. “It is time to disrupt this closed market; it is time to reinvent everything we have today,” said Choi during his TIP Summit talk.

Voyager

TIP unveiled a white-box packet optical platform dubbed Voyager at the summit. The one rack-unit (1RU) box is a project for backhaul. Voyager has been designed by Facebook and the platform’s specification has been made available to TIP.

Voyager is based on another platform Facebook has developed: the Wedge top-of-rack switch for the data centre. Wedge switches are now being made by several contract manufacturers. Each can be customised based on the operating system used and the applications loaded onboard. The goal is to adopt a similar approach with Voyager.

“Eventually, there will be something that is definitely market competitive in terms of hardware cost,” says Niall Robinson, vice president, global business development at ADVA Optical Networking, one of the companies involved in the Voyager initiative. “And you have got an open-source community developing a feature set from a software perspective.”

Other companies backing Voyager include Acacia Communications, Broadcom and Lumentum which are involved in the platform’s hardware design. Snaproute is delivering the software inside the box while first units are being made by the contract manufacturer, Celestica.

ADVA Optical Networking’s will provide a sales channel for Voyager and is interfacing it to its network management system. The system vendor will also provide services and software support. Coriant is another systems vendor backing the project. It is providing networking support including routeing and switching as well as dense WDM transmission capabilities.

This [initiative] has shown me that the whole supply and design chains for transport can be opened up; I find that fascinating.

Robinson describes TIP as one of the most ambitious and creative projects he has been involved in. “It is less around the design of the box," he says. "It is the shaking up of the ecosystem, that is what TIP is about.” 

A 25-year involvement in transport has given Robinson an ingrained view that it is different to other aspects of telecom. For example, a vendor’s transport system must be at each end of the link due to the custom nature of platforms that are designed to squeeze maximum performance over a link. “In some cases, transport is different but what TIP maybe realises is that transport does not always have to be different,” says Robinson. “This [initiative] has shown me that the whole supply and design chains for transport can be opened up; I find that fascinating.”      

Specification

At the core of the 1RU Voyager is the Broadcom StrataXGS Tomahawk. The 3.2-terabit switch chip is also the basis of the Wedge top-of-rack switch. The Tomahawk features 128 x 25 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) serdes to enable 32 x 100 gigabit ports, and supports layer-2 switching and layer-3 routeing.

Voyager uses 12, 100 Gigabit Ethernet client-side pluggable interfaces and four 200-gigabit networking interfaces based on Acacia’s AC-400 optical module. The AC-400 uses coherent optics and supports polarisation multiplexing, 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM).  “If it was a pure transport box the input rate would equal the output rate but because it is a packet box, you can take advantage of layer 2 over-subscription,” says Robinson. 

At layer-3 the total routeing capacity is 2 terabits, the sum of the client and network interfaces. “At layer-3, the Tomahawk chip does not know what is a client port and what is a networking port; they are just Ethernet ports on that device,” says Robinson.

ADVA Optical Networking chose to back Voyager because it does not have a packet optical platform in its product portfolio. Until now, it has partnered with Juniper Networks and Arista Networks when such functionality has been needed. “We are chasing certain customers that are interested in Voyager,” says Robinson. “We are enabling ourselves to play in the packet optical space with a self-contained box.”  

Status and roadmap

The Voyager is currently in beta-prototype status and has already been tested in trials. Equinix has tested the box working with Lumentum’s open line system over 140km of fiber, while operator MTN has also tested Voyager.

The platform is expected to be generally available in March or April 2017, by when ADVA Optical Networking will have completed the integration of Voyager with its network management system.

Robinson says there are two ways Voyager could develop.

Source: Gazettabyte

One direction is to increase the interface and switching capacities of the 1RU box. Next-generation coherent digital signal processors that support higher baud rates will enable 400Gbps and even 600Gbps wavelengths using PM-64QAM. This could enable the line-side capacity to increase from the current 800Gbps to 2 or 3 terabits. And soon, 400Gbps client-side pluggable modules will become available. Equally, Broadcom is already sampling its next-generation Tomahawk II chip that has 6.4 terabits of switching capacity.

Another direction the platform could evolve is to add an backplane to connect multiple Voyagers. This is something already done with the Wedge '6-pack' that combines six Wedge switch cards. A Voyager 6-pack would result in a packet-optical platform with multiple terabits of switching and routeing capacity.

“This is an industry-driven initiative as opposed to a company-driven one,” says Robinson. “Voyager will go whichever way the industry thinks the lowest cost is.” 

Corrected on Dec 22nd. The AC-400 is a 5"x7" module and not as originally stated.