Ciena enhances its 6500 packet-optical transport family
"The 6500 T-Series is a big deal as Ciena can offer two different systems depending on what the customer is looking for," says Andrew Schmitt, founder and principal analyst of market research firm, Cignal AI.
Helen XenosIf customers want straightforward transport and the ability to reach a number of different distances, there is the existing 6500 S-series, says Schmitt. The T-series is a system specifically for metro-regional networks that can accommodate multiple traffic types – OTN or packet.
"It has very high density for a packet-optical system and offers pay-as-you-grow with CFP2-ACO [coherent pluggable] modules," says Schmitt.
Ciena says the T-series has been developed to address new connectivity requirements service providers face. Content is being shifted to the metro to improve the quality of experience for end users and reduce capacity on backbone networks. Such user consumption of content is one factor accounting for the strong annual 40 percent growth in metro traffic.
According to Ciena, service providers have to deploy multiple overlays of network elements to scale capacity, including at the photonic switch layer, because they need more than 8-degree reconfigurable optical add/ drop multiplexers (ROADMs).
Operators are looking for a next-generation platform for these very high-capacity switching locations to efficiently distribute content
But overlays add complexity to the metro network and slow the turn-up times of services, says Helen Xenos, director, product and technology marketing at Ciena: "Operators are looking for a next-generation platform for these very high-capacity switching locations to efficiently distribute content."
U.S. service provider Verizon is the first to announce the adoption of the 6500 T-series to modernise its metro and is now deploying the platform. "Verizon is dealing with a heterogeneous network in the metro with many competing requirements," says Schmitt. "They don’t have the luxury of starting over or specialising like some of the hyper-scale transport architectures."
The T-series, once deployed, will handle the evolving requirements of Verizon's network. "Sure, it comes with additional costs compared with bare-bones transport but my conversation with folks at Verizon would indicate flexibility is worth the price," says Schmitt.
Ciena has over 500 customers in 50 countries for its existing 6500 S-series. Customers include 18 of the top 25 communications service providers and three of the top five content providers.
Xenos says an increasing number of service providers are interested in its latest platform. The T-series is part of six request-for-proposals (RFPs) and is being evaluated in several service providers' labs. The 6500 T-series will be generally available this month.
6500 T-series
The existing 6500 S-series family comprises four platforms, from the 2 rack-unit (RU) 6500-D2 chassis to the 22RU 6500-S32 that supports Ethernet, time-division multiplexed traffic and wavelength division multiplexing, and 3.2 terabit-per-second (Tbps) packet/ Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching.
The two T-series platforms are the half rack 6500-12T and the full rack 6500-24T. The cards have been upgraded from 100-gigabit switching per slot to 500-gigabit per slot.
The 6500-T12 has 12 service slots which house either service interfaces or photonic modules. There are also 2 control modules. Shown at the base of the chassis are four 500 Gig switching modules. Source: Ciena
The 500 gigabit switching per slot means the 6500-12T supports 6 terabits of switching capacity while the -24T will support 12 terabits by year end. The platforms have been tested and will support 1 terabit per slot, such that the -24T will deliver the full 24 terabit. Over 100 terabit of switching capacity will be possible in a multiple-chassis configuration, managed as a single switching node.
The latest platforms can use Ciena's existing coherent line cards that support two 100 gigabit wavelengths. The T-Series also supports a 500-gigabit coherent line card with five CFP2-ACOs coupled with Ciena's WaveLogic 3 Nano DSP-ASIC.
"We will support higher-capacity wavelengths in a muxponder configuration using our existing S-series," says Xenos. "But for switching applications, switching lower-speed traffic across the shelf onto a very high-capacity wavelength, this is something that the T-series would be used for."
The T-series also adds a denser, larger-degree ROADM, from an existing 6500 S-series 8-degree to a 16-degree flexible grid, colourless, directionless and contentionless (CDC) design. Xenos says the ROADM design is also more compact such that the line amplifiers fit on the same card.
"The requirements of this platform is that it has full integration of layer 0, layer 1 and layer 2 functions," says Xenos.
The 6500 T-series supports open application programming interfaces (APIs) and is being incorporated as part of Ciena's Emulation Cloud. The Emulation Cloud enabling customers to test software on simulated network configurations without requiring 6500 hardware and is being demonstrated at OFC 2016.
The 6500 is also being integrated as part of Ciena's Blue Planet orchestration and management architecture.
Ciena uses software to dip into the photonic layer
Ciena has enhanced its control plane and line elements to enable software to control the optical networking layer. The additions are part of Ciena's OPn network architecture evolution to enable greater visibility and automation. "It is about putting software into a system to allow you to program the photonic line," says Michael Adams, vice president of product & technology marketing at Ciena.
"For an SDN controller to control a photonic line, we need to present it as a programmable layer. The infrastructure is now there to be programmed."
Michael Adams, Ciena
Dubbed WaveLogic Photonics, the enhancements address the optical line system, made up of Ciena's WaveLogic coherent module, amplifier and reconfigurable optical add/ drop multiplexer (ROADM) elements. Ciena's ROADM is colourless and directionless and supports flexible-grid lightpaths, while the contentionless attribute will be added in the second half of the year.
Making the optical layer programmable is tricky. The OTN, Ethernet and IP networking layers above the line system are digital, lending themselves to software control. The optical layer, however, is not. Its performance is determined by linear and non-linear fibre transmission effects and parameters such as the optical signal-to-noise ratio.
"We believe the photonic line is equally important to be programmed, but the challenge has been that it is an analogue domain," says Adams.
To this aim, Ciena's WaveLogic Photonics introduces three changes:
- The OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane has been extended to include the photonic layer.
- Software-based line monitoring has been added to Raman to simplify amplifier deployment.
- Network analytics has been introduced to identify faults and optical signal loss.
By extending the OneConnect Control Plane to the photonic level, service providers can offer customers more tailored service-level agreements (SLAs). Customers that want protection against double fibre cuts can add automated optical restoration. After the first cut, the 50-millisecond OTN layer restoration kicks in. If a second cut occurs, OneConnect will restore the network in tens of seconds. At present, a truck roll and manual repair is needed after the second cut and that can take hours to repair. "The combination of the two [OTN and optical restoration] gives you a much more flexible system of SLAs that can be offered," says Adams.
The second line system enhancement, dubbed Smart Raman, adds a software-based optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) to Ciena's hybrid Raman/ EDFA amplifiers to simplify their deployment. The OTDR enables the amp to monitor and characterise the line.
"The Raman provides simple and controlled turn-up and will not turn on until it has checked that the surrounding fibre does not have any high losses," says Adams. Such automation replaces the careful manual configuration otherwise required when deploying high-powered Raman amps.
Ciena is also using the line data collected by the OTDR to provide network analytics. The line's condition can be plotted over time, helping identify any degradation in line elements. The analytics will also locate faults across fibre spans without requiring a truck roll. "Now from the NOC [network operations centre], that [fault] visibility is within 3m," says Adams.
Comcast has already used Smart Raman and the analytics as part of a Terabit trial conducted with Ciena. The cable operator located signal loss points on the line. "Comcast was able to recover several dBs of margin on that fibre," says Adams. "With 16-QAM used for the Terabit trial, they were able to go much farther; they achieved 1,000km even on marginal fibre." Ciena will also introduce advanced 16-QAM signaling in the second half of the year.
Ciena says WaveLogic Photonics should be viewed as enhancing the OneConnect control plane at the OTN and optical levels, while paving the way for software-defined networking (SDN) and applications-driven automation.
"For an SDN controller to control a photonic line, we need to present it as a programmable layer," says Adams. "The infrastructure is now there to be programmed."
The Smart Raman and analytics software is available and shipping in volume, says Ciena, while the photonic additions to the control plane are being trialled by customers and will be available in several weeks as part of the Release 10.0 software for Ciena's 6500 platform.
See also:
Ovum: Ciena launches WaveLogic Photonics, click here
Apps over packet-optical: Ciena boosts 6500's packet handling
Source: Ciena
Ciena has enhanced its packet-optical equipment portfolio by adding packet support to its flagship 6500 platform.
Cards and software from Ciena's established Carrier Ethernet packet platforms have been added to the 6500, a packet-optical platform that features reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexing (ROADM), WaveLogic3 coherent transponders, Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching and SONET/SDH aggregation. The system vendor has also developed packet aggregation and switch fabric cards for the 6500.
"You can now use the 6500 for 100 percent packet switching, 100 percent OTN switching, or any mix in between," says Michael Adams, vice president of product and technical marketing at Ciena.
The development is part of a general trend to combine optical and packet to create scalable, manageable networks. It also addresses the operators' growing need for programmable networks to deliver cloud-based services and dynamic bandwidth.
Applications
Ciena has a virtual wide-area network (VWAN) control layer that resides above the networking layer that abstracts the hardware and through which software applications can be executed (see chart).
"We have a scheduler 'app' through the control layer VWAN that allows bandwidth to change between sites, for example," says Adams. "Every night I want to do a backup between these times and I want this much bandwidth as I do it."
Another application is machine-to-machine communication that can be used to link data centres. "If you can virtualise within a data centre, why not virtualise across data centres?" says Adams.
As [servers'] virtual machines move between data centres, the performance of the network becomes key. Ciena has an application programming interface (API) that links to the server's hypervisor that allows machine-to-machine communication to be intercepted to benefit the bandwidth made available for the virtual machine traffic. "We are not doing it today but we have the software to link between two data centres," says Adams.
6500 enhancements
Until now it has been difficult to combine packet with packet optical, requiring different platforms, each with their own management system, says Adams. "It has been hard to take a base station that needs only packet, put the Carrier Ethernet traffic onto a ring [network] and then onto a 100 Gigabit wavelength," he says. "You either built pure packet or used a form of packet optical but it was hard to mix."
Ciena has added hardware and software to the 6500 from its existing packet platforms. The packet platforms are used to deliver Ethernet services and infrastructure and are a $40 million-a-quarter business for Ciena, with over 300,000 network elements deployed.
The service-aware operating system (SAOS), developed for the Ethernet packet platforms, has also been ported onto the 6500's new packet and fabric cards.
With the 6500 running the same software as its packet platforms, service management across the network becomes simpler. "Now, one system can deploy services, and look at performance visualisation between the layers," says Adams.
Ciena's latest hardware cards include blades with 1 and 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) aggregation that operate independently of the 6500's switch fabric. "You don't touch the fabric, just run [them] over a WDM wavelength," says Adams. The stackable blades support 120Gbps to 300Gbps of packet traffic.
Meanwhile, the 6500 switch fabric cards add 600 Gigbit or 1.2 Terabit packet switching capacity that will be increased further in future.
"We have got these blades that can be stacked besides each other for resiliency or scale," says Adams. "And if you want to scale those up, there is a [switch] fabric solution."
Further reading:
100 Gigabit and packet optical loom large in the metro
P-OTS 2.0: 60-second interview with Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin