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.
PMC unveils OTN framer for IP core and edge routers
The Meta-240G frames IP router traffic using OTN before passing the traffic to the transport network. Line-rate encryption is included on-chip to secure traffic between data centres and traffic in the cloud.
Source: PMC-Sierra
Adding OTN to a router delivers several benefits, says PMC. OTN helps identify networking faults more quickly and simplifies the monitoring and enforcement of service-level agreements. OTN also includes forward-error correction which benefits optical link performance.
Ethernet is the default router protocol interface while OTN is the dominant protocol in the transport network, says PMC. By moving OTN onto the router’s line port, the transport network extends its end-point reach to the router, says Stephen Docking, senior product line manager, communications unit at PMC. This leads to faster fault isolation and fault recovery.
“The transport network can now communicate with the router in a standard way, providing an extra level of protection that is faster than just IP layer protection,” says Docking.
OTN also supports the monitoring of error rates across the link.“By making the router part of the link, the service provider can not only monitor performance within the transport network but across the entire end-to-end link including the router,” says Docking. Such monitoring helps verify service-level agreements.
Meta-240G features
The Meta-240G is PMC’s third-generation framer for routers. The previous generation device, the 120 gigabit Meta-120G was PMC’s first to support OTU4 100 gigabit frames and was implemented in 40nm CMOS.
The Meta-240G doubles the total bandwidth: 240 gigabit facing the front panel optics and 240 gigabit interfacing to the network processor on the router’s line card. The device can thus support two 100 gigabit interfaces, six 40 gigabit interfaces and 24, 10 gigabit interfaces. “You can even have two 100 Gig and one 40 Gig, or two 100 Gig and four 10 Gig but most customers will just use 100 Gig [interfaces],” says Docking.
PMC has doubled the framer’s capacity while keeping overall power consumption fixed, in effect halving the power per port compared to its previous generation Meta-120G framer. Yet the chip also supports new features including a low-latency AES-256 encryption engine and an on-chip gearbox. The Meta-240G achieves the power savings by making the chip in 28nm CMOS and by improving the serdes design.
The gearbox function translates between 10 gigabit streams and 25 gigabit ones. Many devices use 10 gigabit serdes but to connect to a CFP2 or CFP4 100 gigabit optical modules, 25 gigabit electrical channels are required.
“Designers have had to use discrete gearbox devices [on the line card] which adds space, power and cost,” says Docking. “With the Meta-240G, the gearbox function is integrated into the device.”
Given IP traffic trends, will a 400 gigabit Meta device be needed in 2017? “It may be a bit longer - two to three years’ time - but we would need to [have such a device] to follow the existing trend,” says Docking.
Further information
PMC advances OTN with 400 Gigabit processor, click here