Ciena launches the 8700 metro Ethernet-over-WDM platform
- The 8700 Packetwave is an Ethernet-over-DWDM platform
- The 8700 is claimed to deliver double the Ethernet density while halving the power consumption and space required.
Source: Ciena
Ciena has launched the 8700 Packetwave platform that combines high-capacity Ethernet switching with 100 Gigabit coherent optical transmission.
The platform is designed to cater for the significant growth in metro traffic, estimated at between 30 and 50 percent each year, and the ongoing shift from legacy to Ethernet services.
Brian Lavallée
Analysts predict that by 2017, 75 percent of the overall bandwidth in the metro will be Ethernet-based.
"In the major markets we compete in, our customers are telling us that Ethernet has already surpassed 75 percent," says Brian Lavallée, director of technology & solutions marketing at Ciena.
"What you're seeing is a trend towards convergence," says Ray Mota, managing partner at ACG Research. "The economics make sense and it should have happened but organisational issues have caused the delay."
Many service providers have two separate groups, one for packet and another for transport. "Now, many service providers are merging the two groups, feeling the time is right, so you will see more and more converge products get more penetration," says Mota.
The 8700 can be viewed as a slimmed-down packet-optical transport system (P-OTS), tailored for Ethernet. The platform's packet features include Ethernet and MPLS-TP for connection-oriented Ethernet, while optically it has 100 Gigabit coherent WDM.
"This is a more specialised machine hitting this target spot in the aggregation networks," says Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst, carrier networks at Infonetics Research. "It doesn't need much MPLS, it doesn’t need OTN switching, and it doesn’t need SDH/TDM."
The main applications for the 8700 include aggregation of telcos' business services, data centre interconnect, wireless backhaul, and the distribution of cable operators' Ethernet traffic. "It [the 8700] is a good product for edge aggregation, where the bandwidth is getting cranked up," says Howard. "I see it as an Ethernet-over-DWDM platform, performing the aggregation on the customer side and the fan-in on the upstream side."
Ray MotaTwo Packetwave platforms have been announced: an 800 Gigabit full-duplex switching capacity platform and a 2-Terabit one. The platform's line cards support 10, 40 and 100 Gigabit client-side interfaces while a line-side card has two 100 Gigabit coherent interfaces based on Ciena's WaveLogic DSP-ASIC technology.
Ciena says the platform will support double the capacity when it introduces WaveLogic devices that deliver 100 and 200 Gig rates. "It has been tested," says Lavallée. "It is just a matter of changing the cards."
The 8700 is claimed to deliver double the Ethernet density compared to competing platforms, while halving the power consumption and space required. "Given it is a new category of product, we don't have a direct competitor," says Lavallée. "But when we say half the power and space, that is the average across these multiple products from competitors."
Lavallée would not detail the competitor platforms used in the comparison but Mota cites Alcatel-Lucent's 7450 and 7950 platforms, Juniper's MX and PTX platforms and Cisco's ASR 9000 as the ones likely used.
Using merchant silicon for the Ethernet switching has helped achieve greater density, as has using Ciena's own WaveLogic DSP-ASIC. "The further development we have done on our [WaveLogic] coherent optical processor does give us significant savings, not just in power but also real-estate," says Lavallée.
Being a layer-2 platform, the 8700 has none of the packet processing and specialist memory hardware requirements associated with layer-3 IP routers, also benefitting the platform's overall power consumption.
Michael HowardCiena stresses that P-OTS is not going away and that it will continue to deliver significant value for certain customers. "The biggest concern of customers is complexity," says Lavallée. "There are a lot of ways of reducing complexity in your network and some customers believe that is Ethernet-over-dense WDM."
ACG's Mota sees the launch of the 8700 as an important move by Ciena. "The metro is the hot area that needs transitioning," he says. "Many of the traditional core requirements are moving to the metro so the timing of Ciena playing in this space with a converge platform could be strategic, providing they partner well with companies like Ericsson and the network functions virtualisation software providers."
Lavallée says that with the advent of software-defined networking and the applications that make use of the technology, there is an underlying shift from the hardware towards software. But he dismisses the notion that hardware is becoming less important.
"What is lost in this whole discussion is that if you don't have a programmable piece of hardware below, you can't write these apps," says Lavallée. The 8700 hardware is programmable and there are open interfaces to access it, he says: "We have a lot of knobs and switches that the software can use."
Further reading
Paper: Ciena 8700 Packetwave platform, click here
Verizon readies its metro for next-generation P-OTS
Verizon is preparing its metro network to carry significant amounts of 100 Gigabit traffic and has detailed its next-generation packet-optical transport system (P-OTS) requirements. The operator says technological advances in 100 Gig transmission and new P-OTS platforms - some yet to be announced - will help bring large scale 100 Gig deployments in the metro in the next year or so.
Glenn Wellbrock
The operator says P-OTS will be used for its metro and regional networks for spans of 400-600km. "That is where we have very dense networks," says Glenn Wellbrock, director of optical transport network architecture and design at Verizon. "The amount of 100 Gig is going to be substantially higher than it was in long haul."
Verizon announced in April that it had selected Fujitsu and Coriant for a 100 Gig metro upgrade. The operator has already deployed Fujitsu's FlashWave 9500 and the Coriant 7100 (formerly Tellabs 7100) P-OTS platforms. "The announcement [in April] is to put 100 Gig channels in that embedded base," says Wellbrock.
The operator has 4,000 reconfigurable optical add/ drop multiplexers (ROADMs) across its metro networks worldwide and all support 100 Gig channels. But the networks are not tailored for high-speed transmission and hence the cost of 100 Gig remains high. For example, dispersion compensation fibre, and Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA) rather than hybrid EDFA-Raman are used for the existing links. "It [the network] is not optimised for 100 Gig but will support it, and we are using [100 Gig] on an as-needed basis," says Wellbrock.
The metro platform will be similar to those used for Verizon's 100 Gig long-haul in that it will be coherent-based and use advanced, colourless, directionless, contentionless and flexible-grid ROADMs. "But all in a package that fits in the metro, with a much lower cost, better density and not such a long reach," says Wellbrock.
The amount of 100 Gig is going to be substantially higher than it was in long haul
One development that will reduce system cost is the advent of the CFP2-based line-side optical module; another is the emergence of third- or fourth-generation coherent DSP-ASICs. "We are getting to the point where we feel it is ready for the metro," says Wellbrock. "Can we get it to be cost-competitive? We feel that a lot of the platforms are coming along."
The latest P-OTS platforms feature enhanced packet capabilities, supporting carrier Ethernet, multi-protocol label switching - transport profile (MPLS-TP), and high-capacity packet and Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching. Recently announced P-OTS platforms suited to Verizon's metro request-for-proposal include Cisco Systems' Network Convergence System (NCS) 4000 and Coriant's mTera. Verizon says it expects other vendors to introduce platforms in the next year.
Verizon still has over 250,000 SONET elements in its network. Many are small and reside in the access network but SONET also exists in its metro and regional networks. The operator is keen to replace the legacy technology but with such a huge number of installed network elements, this will not happen overnight.
Verizon's strategy is to terminate the aggregated SONET traffic at its edge central offices so that it only has to deal with large Ethernet and OTN flows at the network node. "We plan to terminate the SONET, peel out the packets and send them in a packet-optimised fashion," says Wellbrock. In effect, SONET is to be stopped from an infrastructure point of view, he says, by converting the traffic for transport over OTN and Ethernet.
SDN and multi-layer optimisation
The P-OTS platform, with its integrated functionality spanning layer-0 to layer-2, will have a role in multi-layer optimisation. The goal of multi-layer optimisation is to transport services on the most suitable networking layer, typically the lowest, most economical layer possible. Software-defined networking (SDN) will be used to oversee such multi-layer optimisation.
However, P-OTS, unlike servers used in the data centre, are specialist rather than generic platforms. "Optical stuff is not generic hardware," says Wellbrock. Each P-OTS platform is vendor-proprietary. What can be done, he says, is to use 'domain controllers'. Each vendor's platform will have its own domain controller, above which will sit the SDN controller. Using this arrangement, the vendor's own portion of the network can be operated generically by an SDN controller, while benefitting from the particular attributes of each vendor's platform using the domain controller.
There is always frustration; we always want to move faster than things are coming about
Verizon's view is that there will be a hierarchy of domain and SDN controllers."We assume there are going to be multiple layers of abstraction for SDN," says Wellbrock. There will be no one, overriding controller with knowledge of all the networking layers: from layer-0 to layer-3. Even layer-0 - the optical layer - has become dynamic with the addition of colourless, directionless, contentionless and flexible-grid ROADM features, says Wellbrock.
Instead, as part of these abstraction layers, there will be one domain that will control all the transport, and another that is all-IP. Some software element above these controllers will then inform the optical and IP domains how best to implement service tasks such as interconnecting two data centres, for example. The transport controller will then inform each layer its particular task. "Now I want layer-0 to do that, and that is my Ciena box; I need layer-1 to do this and that happens to be a Cyan box; and we need MPLS transport to do this, and that could be Juniper," says Wellbrock, pointing out that in this example, three vendor-domains are involved, each with its own domain controller.
Is Verizon happy with the SDN progress being made by the P-OTS vendors?
"There is always frustration; we always want to move faster than things are coming about," says Wellbrock. "The issue, though, is that there is nothing I see that is a showstopper."
60-second interview with .... Dell'Oro's Jimmy Yu
"For the year, it is going to be a fivefold growth rate [for 100 Gig transport]."
Jimmy Yu, Dell'Oro
Q: That fact that the market is down 5 percent on a year ago. Why is this?
A: There are a few factors. First, the macro-economy in Europe continues to get worse; that causes a slowdown.
A second factor is that in North America there was a decline in the second quarter, which is pretty unusual. Part of it, we think, might be that operators have caught up with a lot of the spending to increase broadband, after adding [to the network] for a couple of good years.
The third issue is that the China market has had a really slow start. And while there has been talk about the Chinese market softening, it seems that the CapEx [capital expenditure] is there for a strong second half.
What categories does Dell'Oro include when it talks about optical transport?
There are two main pieces: WDM [wavelength division multiplexing], both metro and long haul, and the multi-service multiplexer used for aggregation. The third piece, which is really small, is optical switching - optical cross-connect used in the core and lately more so in the metro.
According to Dell'Oro, wavelength division multiplexing was up 5 percent in the first half of 2012 compared to the same period a year ago, due to demand for 40 Gig and 100 Gig. What is happening in these two markets?
At 100 Gig we are at an inflection point where demand growth rates are really high. We've got a doubling in demand and shipments quarter-on-quarter [in the second quarter]. For the year, it is going to be a fivefold growth rate.
Also the 40 Gig is still growing. It has been around for a few years so its growth rate is not as strong [as 100 Gig transport] but it is still a significant part of the market.
Has the market settled on particular modulation scheme, especially at 40 Gig?
For 100 Gig the majority [deployed] is coherent. There is one company at least, ADVA Optical Networking, which is coming out with its direct-detection scheme for 100 Gig. This has now been shipping for one quarter. There is a market for the price point and the lower-span link of direct-detection.
For 40 Gig there is still a mix of modulations. Vendors coming out with 100 Gig coherent are also coming out with 40 Gig coherent options. So coherent at 40 Gig is now approaching half of the total market and is happening pretty quickly.
As for [40 Gig] DQPSK [differential quadrature phase-shift keying] modulation, it is probably a little bit more than DPSK [differential phase-shift keying].
You also report a rise in the adoption of optical packet products and that it contributed close to one-third of the optical market revenues in the first half 2012. Why is that?
The optical packet platform is a wider definition than just packet optical transport systems (P-OTS).
One reason why optical packet is growing is that with traditional P-OTS, you have cross-connect and switching capabilities in a WDM system so as you go to higher 40 and 100 Gig wavelengths you want some bandwidth management in that system.
Another thing is that people are trying to make the aggregation layer - the traditional SONET/SDH - more Ethernet friendly and MPLS-TP [multiprotocol label switching, transport profile] is gaining traction.
Combined, we are seeing this optical packet market has grown 12 percent year-on-year in the second quarter whereas the overall market has declined.
Dell'Oro said Huawei has 20 percent market share, which other vendors have double-digit market share?
Besides Huawei, the other vendors with double-digit percentage for the quarter - in order - are ZTE, Alcatel-Lucent and Ciena.
Did you see anything in this latest study that was surprising?
There was nothing in this quarter but I saw it last quarter. The legacy equipment – traditional SONET/SDH – is declining. Most of the market decline for optical is in legacy.
SONET/SDH sales in the second quarter of 2012 declined by 20 percent year-on-year. It is finally happening: the market is shifting away from SONET/SDH.
AppliedMicro samples 100Gbps CMOS multiplexer
AppliedMicro has announced the first CMOS merchant multiplexer chip for 100Gbps coherent optical transmission. The S28032 device supports dual polarisation, quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) and has a power consumption of 4W, half that of current multiplexer chip designs implemented in BiCMOS.
The S28032 100 Gig multiplexer IC. Source: AppliedMicro
"CMOS has a very low gain-bandwidth product, typically 100GHz," says Tim Warland, product marketing manager, connectivity solutions at AppliedMicro. “Running at 32GHz, we have been able to achieve a very high bandwidth with CMOS."
Significance
The availability of a CMOS merchant device will be welcome news for optical transport suppliers and 100Gbps coherent module makers. CMOS has better economics than BiCMOS due to the larger silicon wafers used and the chip yields achieved. The reduced power consumption also promotes the move to smaller-sized optical modules than the current 5x7-inch multi-source agreement (MSA).
"By reducing the power and the size, we can get to a 4x6-inch next-generation module,” says Warland. “And perhaps if we go for a shorter [optical transmission] reach - 400-600km - we could get into a CFP; then you can get four modules on a card.”
"Coherent ultimately is the solution people want to go to [in the metro] but optical duo-binary will do just fine for now"
Tim Warland, AppliedMicro
Chip details
The S28032 has a CAUI interface: 10x12Gbps input lanes that are multiplexed into four lanes at 28Gbps to 32Gbps. The particular data rate depends on the forward error correction (FEC) scheme used. The four lanes are DQPSK-precoded before being fed to the polarisation multiplexer to create the DP-QPSK waveforms.
The device also supports the SFI-S interface - 21 input channels, each at 6Gbps. This is significant as it enables the S28032 to be interfaced to NTT Electronics' (NEL) DSP-ASIC coherent receiver chip that has been adopted by 100Gbps module makers Oclaro and Opnext (now merged) as well as system vendors including Fujitsu Optical Systems and NEC.
The mux IC within a 100Gbps coherent 5x7-inch optical module. Source: AppliedMicro
The AppliedMicro multiplexer IC, which is on the transmit path, interfaces with NEL's DSP-ASIC that is on the receiver path, because the FEC needs to be a closed loop to achieve the best efficiency, says Warland. "If you know what you are transmitting and receiving, you can improve the gain and modify the coherent receiver sampling points if you know what the transmit path looks like," he says.
The DSP-ASIC creates the transmission payloads and uses the S28032 to multiplex those into 28Gbps or greater speed signals.
The SFI-S interface is also suited to interface to FPGAs, for those system vendors that have their own custom FPGA-based FEC designs.
"Packet optical transport systems is more a potential growth engine as the OTN network evolves to become a real network like SONET used to be"
Francesco Caggioni. AppliedMicro
The multiplexer chip's particular lane rate is set by the strength of the FEC code used and its associated overhead. Using OTU4 frames with its 7% overhead FEC, the resulting data rate is 27.95Gbps. With a stronger 15% hard-decision FEC, each of the 4 channel's data rate is 30Gbps while it is 31.79Gbps with soft-decision FEC.
"It [the chip] has got sufficient headroom to accommodate everything that is available today and that we are considering in the OIF [Optical Internetworking Forum],” says Warland. The multiplexer is expected to be suitable for coherent designs that achieve a reach of up to 2,000-2,500km but the sweet spot is likely to be for metro networks with a reach of up to 1,000km, he says.
But while the CMOS device can achieve 32Gbps, it has its limitations. "For ultra long haul, we can't support a FEC rate higher than 20%," says Warland. "For that, a 25% to 30% FEC is needed."
AppliedMicro is sampling the device to lead customers and will start production in 1Q 2013.
What next
The S28032 joins AppliedMicro's existing S28010 IC suited for the 10km 100 Gigabit Ethernet 100GBASE-LR4 standard, and for optical duo-binary 100Gbps direct detection that has a reach of 200-1,000km.
"Our next step is to try and get a receiver to match this chip," says Warland. But it will be different to NEL's coherent receiver: "NEL's is long haul." Instead, AppliedMicro is eyeing the metro market where a smaller, less power-hungry chip is needed.
"Coherent ultimately is the solution people want to go to [in the metro] but optical duo-binary will do just fine for now," says Warland.
Two million 10Gbps OTN ports
AppliedMicro has also announced that it has shipped 2M 10Gbps OTN silicon ports. This comes 18 months after it announced that it had shipped its first million.
"OTN is showing similar growth to the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market but with a four-year lag," says Francesco Caggioni, strategic marketing director, connectivity solutions at AppliedMicro.
The company sees OTN growth in the IP edge router market and for transponder and muxponder designs, while packet optical transport systems (P-OTS) is an emerging market.
"Packet optical transport systems is more a potential growth engine as the OTN network evolves to become a real network like SONET used to be," says Caggioni. "We are seeing development but not a lot of deployment."
Further reading:
Cortina unveils multi-channel dispersion compensation chip
Cortina Systems has announced its latest electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) chip. The CS4342 is a compact device that supports eight duplex 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) links.
"Some customers are doing 2,000 signals at 10 Gig across the backplane"
Scott Feller, Cortina
The chip is suited for use with optical modules and on line cards to counter the effect of transmission distortion where a bit's energy leaks into one or more adjacent bits, known as inter-symbol interference (ISI).
The Cortina device can be used for 10, 40 and 100Gbps line card and backplane designs and supports copper cable and optical fibre standards such as the multimode 10GBASE‐LRM and the 80km 10GBASE‐ZR interface.
Significance
Routeing high-speed signals from an ASIC to the various high-speed interfaces - 10Gbps and greater - is becoming harder as more interfaces are crammed onto a card.
"Boards are getting denser: from 48 ports to 96," says Scott Feller, director of the EDC product line at Cortina Systems. The issue with an ASIC on the board is that the distance it can span to the modules is only about 6-8 inches (~15-20cm). Placing the PHY chip on the board relaxes this constraint.
The use of the octal EDC chip between a line card IC and SFP+ optical transceivers. Source: Cortina Systems
Vendors also gain greater flexibility in terms of the interfaces they can support. "These types of PHYs allow them [designers] to avoid having to make hard decisions," says Feller. "They put the PHY in front of the optical connector and they almost get every single optical format on the market."
The platforms using such EDC PHYs include data centre switches and telecom platforms such as packet optical transport systems (P-OTS). Data centre switches typically support Direct Attach Copper cable - a market area that has been growing significantly, says Cortina - and short-reach optical interfaces. For P-OTS the interfaces include the 10GBASE-ZR where EDC is a necessity.
The device is also being used for system backplanes where bandwidth requirements are increasing significantly. "Some customers are doing 2,000 signals at 10 Gig across the backplane," says Feller. "Now that there are so many signals - so much crosstalk - and the ASICs are further away from the backplane, so PHYs are starting to be put into systems."
EDC employed in a backplane design. Source: Cortina Systems
Chip details
Cortina claims the 17x17 ball grid array CS4342 is a third smaller than competing devices. The chip compensates the received signal in the analogue domain. An on-chip DSP calculates the filter's weights to counter ISI while the filtering is performed using analogue circuitry. As a result, the EDC has a latency of 1ns only.
Cortina has dual, quad and now octal EDC ICs. It says that the delay between the different devices is the same such that both an octal and dual chip can be used to implement a 10-channel 100 Gig interface, for example the 10x10 MSA. In turn, future line cards supporting four 100Gbps interfaces would use five octal PHYs ICs.
The CS4342 is available in sample form and will enter production from October.
What next
"This type of product is at the very end of the food chain so there is always macro developments that could change the market," says Feller. Silicon photonics is one but Feller expects that it will be years before the technology is adopted widely in systems.
The external EDC PHYs must also compete with PHYs integrated within custom ASIC designs and FPGAs. "We always have to be ahead of the cost and performance curves on the PHY," says Feller. "If not, they [companies] are just going to integrate PHYs into their ASICs and FPGAs."
Meanwhile, Cortina says it has two more EDC devices in development.
The OTN transport and switching market
Source: Infonetics Research
The OTN transport and switching market is forecast to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 to 2016, outpacing the 5.5% CAGR of the optical equipment market (WDM, SONET/SDH). So claims a recent study on the OTN equipment marketplace by Infonetics Research.
A Q&A with report author, Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics.
How should OTN (Optical Transport Network) be viewed? As an intermediate technology bridging the legacy SONET/SDH and the packet world? Or is OTN performing another, more fundamental networking role?
There is a deep misconception that once the voyage to an all-packet nirvana is complete, there is no need for SONET/SDH or an equivalent technology. This isn’t true. Networks that are 100% packet still need an OSI layer 1 mechanism, and to date this is mostly SDH and increasingly OTN.
OTN should be viewed as the carrier transport protocol for the foreseeable future. For many carriers, OTN will be used not just for carrying a single packet client, but for interleaving multiple clients onto the same wavelength. This is OTN switching, and it is a superset of OTN transport functionality.
Most people talk about the OTN market but they fail to distinguish between whether OTN is used as a point-to-point technology or as a switching technology that allows the creation of an electronic mesh network.
What is OTN doing within operators' networks that accounts for their strong investment in the technology?
OTN is the new physical layer protocol carrying out the OSI [Open Systems Interconnection] layer 1 functions. Carriers are investing in OTN as part of their continuing investments in WDM [wavelength division multiplexing] equipment, most of which supports OTN transport, a maturing market. The new market is that of OTN switching, which resembles the SONET/SDH multiplexing scheme, but with much better features and management.
OTN switching deployments are directly related to large scale deployments of 40G and 100G transport networks as part of what I like to call The Optical Reboot. As these new wavelength speeds are rolled out, often on unused fibre, other technologies are being introduced at the same time – things like OTN switching and new control plane methods.
"People are underestimating how hard it is to build this [OTN] hardware and combine it with control plane software"
Please explain the difference between the main platforms - OTN transport, OTN switching and P-OTS. And will they have the same relative importance by 2016?
OTN switching is a superset of OTN transport, and the differences are shown in a Venn diagram (chart above) from a recent whitepaper I wrote, Integrated OTN Switching Virtualizes Optical Networks. Somewhere between the two is the muxponder application, which is good for low-volume deployments but becomes expensive and tough to manage when used in quantity.
P-OTS (packet-optical transport systems) are boxes that combine both layer 1 (SONET/SDH and/or OTN switching) with layer 2 (Ethernet, MPLS-TP, other circuit-oriented Ethernet (COE) protocols) in the same hardware and management platform.
Cisco was one of the early leaders in this space with some creative brute-force upgrades to the venerable 15454 platform. Since then, many legacy SONET/SDH multi-service provisioning platforms (MSPPs) have seen upgrades to carry Ethernet. Some of the best examples of this platform type are the Fujitsu 9500, Tellabs' 7100, and Alcatel-Lucent's 1850.
You say a big vendor battle is brewing in the P-OTS space: Cisco, Tellabs, and Alcatel-Lucent are the top 3 vendors, but Fujitsu, Ciena, and Huawei are gaining. What factors will determine a vendor's P-OTS success here?
It really depends. In the metro-regional applications of bigger boxes, things like 100G optics and OTN switching will be more important, as the layer 2 functions are handed off to dedicated layer 2/3 machines. As you get closer to the edge, though, OTN switching will have no importance and everything will depend on the layer 2 and layer zero features.
For layer 2, this means supporting a lightweight circuit-oriented Ethernet protocol with awareness of all the various service types that might be in play. For layer zero, it is all about cheap tunable optics (tunable XFP and SFP+), but particularly ROADMs. I think BTI Photonics, Cyan, Transmode, and ADVA Optical Networking are some of the smaller players to watch here. Mobile backhaul, data centre interconnect, and enterprise data services are the big engines of growth here.
Were there any surprises as part of your research for the report?
There just are not that many vendors shipping OTN switching systems today. I think people are underestimating how hard it is to build this hardware and combine it with control plane software. In 2011, only Ciena, Huawei, and ZTE shipped OTN switching for revenue. This year we should see Alcatel-Lucent, Infinera, Nokia Siemens, and maybe a few more.
Is there one OTN trend currently unclear that you'd highlight as worth watching?
Yes: It isn’t clear to what degree carriers want integrated WDM optics in OTN switches. In the past, big SONET/SDH switches like Ciena’s CoreDirector were always shipped with short-reach optics that connected it to standalone WDM systems. I think going forward, OTN switching and the WDM transport functions must be built into the same hardware in order to get the benefits of OTN switching at the best price, and that’s why I wrote the Integrated OTN Switching white paper – to try to communicate why this is important. It is a shift in the way carriers use this equipment, though, and as you know, some carrier habits are hard to break.
Further reading
OTN Processors from the core to the network edge, click here
ECI Telecom's Apollo mission
The privately-owned system vendor has launched Apollo, a family of what it calls optimised multi-layer transport platforms.
Event
ECI Telecom has launched a family of platforms that combines optical transmission, Ethernet and optical transport network (OTN) switching and IP routing.
The 9600 series platforms, dubbed Apollo, combines the functionality of what until now has required a packet-optical transport system (P-OTS) and a carrier Ethernet switch router (CESR).
The Apollo 9600 series architecture. Source: ECI Telecom
ECI refers to the capabilities of such a combined platform as optimised multi-layer transport (OMLT). Analysts view the platform as a natural evolution of P-OTS rather than a new category of system.
Why is it important?
ECI's Apollo 9600 series is the first to combine dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) with carrier Ethernet switch routing. It is also one of the first platforms that bring OTN switching to the metro; until now OTN switching has been confined to the network core.
Apollo addresses a shortfall of packet optical transport, namely its limited layer 2 capabilities, says ECI. This is addressed with Apollo that also adds layer 3 routing, another first.
“In the buying cycle, operators start with optical networking and add carrier Ethernet switch routing,” says Oren Marmur, head of optical networking & CESR lines of Business at ECI Telecom. Now with Apollo, operators can simplify their networks: they don't have to provision, or maintain, two separate platforms.
ECI claims the Apollo platform, with 100 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) transport and hybrid Ethernet and OTN cards, more than halves the equipment cost compared to using separate ROADM and CESR platforms. The company also says such an Apollo configuration reduces rack space by 38% and power consumption by some 60%.
What has been done
ECI has announced six Apollo platforms that span the access, metro and core networks. The platforms include the SR 9601 and OPT 9603 for metro access and the metro edge SR 9604 and OPT 9608 with four and eight input-output (I/O) cards respectively that support WDM or 100Gbps Ethernet MPLS packet switching. The final two platforms are the OPT 9624 for metro core and the OPT 9648 for regional and long haul, and both can accommodate a terabit universal switch.
Overall Apollo can support 44 or 88 light paths at 10, 40 and 100Gbps, 2-degree and multi-degree colourless, directionless and contentionless ROADMs, OTN and Ethernet switching, and IP/ MPLS and MPLS-TP. "MPLS-TP versus IP/ MPLS is almost a religious issue yet both are valid," says Marmur, who adds that at 40 Gig, ECI will use coherent and direct detection technologies but at 100 Gig it will use only coherent.
The universal fabric of the OPT 9624 and 9648 is cell based - ODUs and packets, not lower-order SONET/SDH traffic. If an operator has any significant amount of SONET/SDH traffic, ECI’s XDM platform or another aggregation box is needed.
The platforms can be configured as CESR platforms, OTN switches, optical transport platforms or combinations of the three.
Analysis
Gazettabyte asked Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at Heavy Reading; Rick Talbot, senior analyst, optical infrastructure at Current Analysis and Dana Cooperson, vice president of the network infrastructure practice at Ovum for their views about the ECI announcement.
Sterling Perrin, Heavy Reading
Apollo has several noteworthy aspects, according to Heavy Reading.
“It is a big announcement for ECI and a big announcement for the industry," says Perrin. “They are doing with the technology some fundamental things that are new.” That said, it remains to be seen how quickly operators will embrace an OMLT-style platform, he says.
Apollo confirms one networking trend - moving the OTN switching fabric into the metro network. So far OTN has been confined largely to the core network. “I know operators are interested but they are still evaluating it,” says Perrin. “But OTN will migrate down from the core to the metro.” Others that have announced such a capability include Ciena and Huawei.
ECI has also put the DWDM transport with the CESR platform. “This is another trend we figured would happen,” he says. “This puts ECI very early, if not first, in doing that function.”
Perrin has his doubts about how quickly the layer 3 functionality added to the platform will be embraced by operators: “What I've seen from the industry is that MPLS-TP will give you that functionality over time as it matures, so this sort of platform may not need the full layer 3 functions.”
The modular nature of the design that allows operators to add the functionality they need helps avoid one issue associated with integrated platforms, paying for functionality that is not needed. And there are cost savings by having a single integrated platform. “You do want to save capex and opex and this is definitely a way to get that done,” says Perrin.
In the network core, the question remains whether packet needs to be combined with the optics. “Metro lends itself more to the integration than the core does,” he says.
ECI’s biggest competitor is probably Huawei and over time also ZTE, says Perrin. ECI has done well in India and other emerging markets that many of the system vendors were ignoring. “Now they have Huawei in the mix, it is definitely tougher,” he says. “This [Apollo] announcement will definitely help them.”
Rick Talbot, Current Analysis
Current Analysis categorises the smaller members of the Apollo family as a packet-optical access (POA) portfolio, playing the same role as Ericsson’s SPO 1400 family and Cisco’s CPT series. The market research firm views the largest two Apollo platforms - the OPT 9624 and 48 - as packet-optical transport systems.
The Apollo POAs bring protocol-agnostic packet switching to the aggregation network, says Talbot, a rarity in this part of the network. Several vendors offer P-OTS with universal switching fabrics but most do not extend that architecture into the aggregation network, Tellabs with the 7100 Nano OTS being the exception. Also the 9600 series IP/ MPLS and MPLS-TP options are very strong, providing what Cisco and Ericsson call unified MPLS, he says.
For Current Analysis, the significance of the portfolio is that the Apollo family delivers converged packet and time-division multiplexing (TDM) switching in a single switch fabric, and provides an infrastructure that extends from the network core to the access network edge.
The switching fabric provides the greatest efficiency for the ultimate traffic type - packets - while simplifying the network architecture and minimising equipment cost. In turn, the breadth of the portfolio provides a common set of capabilities across an operator’s network, minimising training costs and spares inventory.
As for the specification, the wide range of MPLS features integrated into this product family, its terabit universal switch and its 100Gbps DWDM transport capabilities are impressive, says Talbot.
“The primary gap in the portfolio, and it is hard to fault ECI for this, is that the highest capacity member of the family supports ’only’ 1 Terabit-per-second of switching capacity,” he says. “This is not large enough for a Tier 1 core optical switch.”
ECI must first execute on the production of the Apollo family, but if it does, Talbot believe that ECI will capture the interest of larger and more end-to-end operators in markets they already serve.
ECI will also have positioned itself to capture the attention of many European operators and, if it makes a push there, the North American market. However Talbot believes ECI will still be challenged to capture the attention of Tier 1 operators because of the family’s limited maximum scale.
Dana Cooperson, Ovum
Size and scale breeds specialisation, says Cooperson. “Large service providers, including the Tier 1s, won’t be so interested in the OMLT, but they aren’t the target anyway,” she says. Large service providers need plenty of scale when it comes to WDM and CESR functionality, while they also tend to have compartmentalised operations groups. “So an all-in-one product like the OMLT isn’t targeted at them,” she says.
ECI has always done well selling to the Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers as well as enterprises such as utilities that have carrier-like networks. That is because ECI's modular, packet-based platforms are sized and priced to match such operators' and enterprises’ requirements. “I see the OMLT as a continuation of ECI's positioning of its XDM platform,” she says.
Cooperson says that it can be difficult to position vendors’ switch announcements and that they should do more to explain where they sit. But she stresses that the Apollo 9600 series is very different from Juniper's PTX, for example.
“The PTX is positioned in the core as a lower-cost alternative to core routers, while the OMLT as a CESR or even an OTN switch is meant more for smaller sites,” she says. Also the switch capacities of the smaller Apollo platforms fit with ECI's focus and positioning on smaller customers and smaller sites.
Cooperson also highlights the need for the XDM platform if an operator requires SONET/SDH support but says ECI has alluded to add/drop multiplexer blades as well as packet blades. "The [Apollo] focus is on the packet and photonic bits,” says Cooperson. “ECI did emphasize that the XDM isn’t going anywhere, but we’ll see what happens over time and how much SONET/SDH ECI builds in [if any to the Apollo].”
Further Reading
For accompanying White Papers, click here
Optical core switching tops 4 Terabit-per-second.
Event:
Alcatel-Lucent has launched its 1870 Transport Tera Switch (TTS) that has a switch capacity of 4 Terabits-per-second (Tbps). The platform switches and grooms traffic at 1Gbps granularity while supporting lightpaths up to 100Gbps.
“It is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks, driven by video and the move to cloud computing among others,” says Alberto Valsecchi, vice president of marketing, optics activities at Alcatel-Lucent.
The 1870 TTS supports next-generation Optical Transport Network (OTN), carrier Ethernet and SONET/SDH protocols, as well as generalized multiprotocol label switching/ automatically switched optical network(GMPLS/ ASON) control plane technology to enable network management and traffic off-load between the IP core and optical layers.
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It [the 1870 TTS] is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks"
Alberto Valsecchi, Alcatel-Lucent
Central to the 1870 TTS is an in-house-designed 1Tbps switch integrated circuit (IC). The switch chip is non-blocking and by switching at the OTN level supports all traffic types. The device is designed to limit power consumption and is claimed to consume 0.04 Watts per Gbps. Four such ICs are required to achieve the 4Tbps switch capacity.
Each platform line card has a 120Gbps capacity and supports 1, 2.5, 10 and 40Gbps interfaces with a 100Gbps interface planned. The line card’s optical transceiver interfaces include 12 XFPs or two CFP modules. Three 40Gbps interfaces will be supported in future and a 240Gbps line card is already being mentioned (Alcatel-Lucent describes the platform as ‘8Tbps hardware ready’).
The cards also use tunable XFP modules. The 1870 TTS can thus be used alongside existing optical platforms for long-haul dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transport or support its own links. “There is urgency for this [platform] to manage bandwidth in the central office,” says Michael Sedlick, head of cross-connect product line management at Alcatel-Lucent. “It can solve both requirements: working with installed based WDM platforms and enabling a more integrated implementation [using tunable XFPs].”
“It is already in trials and is selected by tier one service providers,” says Valsecchi.
Why is it important:
Gazettabyte asked three experts to give their views on the announcement. In particular, to position the 1870 TTS platform, discuss its significance, and the importance of GMPLS/ ASON support.
Ron Kline, principal analyst, network infrastructure at Ovum
The platform announcement is essentially about solving three key [service provider] dilemmas: scaling to meet the huge growth in traffic, working through the transition from SONET/SDH to Ethernet and driving efficiencies in the network through automation that helps reduce capital expenditure and operational expenditure.
The 1870 TTS is not a new class of platform but rather the next generation of bandwidth management systems that is using electrical OTN switching rather than STS-1 [SONET frame] switching.
Alcatel-Lucent’s existing 1850 packet optical transport system is really the next generation of aggregation (optical edge device/ multi-service provisioning platform) equipment. The difference is where the device goes in the network and the granularity of the switching.
For the 1870, you are switching bandwidth at wavelength rates (2.5G, 10G, 40G, etc.) There is also some sub-wavelength granularity as well. The device is protocol independent because client signals (SONET/SDH, Ethernet, video, etc) are all encapsulated in the OTN wrapper.
The most similar platforms are the Ciena 5400 introduced in September ’09 and Huawei’s OSN 8800. Tellabs also introduced a high-speed shelf for the 7100 that has a 1.2Tbps OTN matrix and ZTE has the ZXONE 8600 that it introduced in March ’09.
Momentum has been building for several years now. The current generation of optical core switches (Ciena's CoreDirector, Alcatel-Lucent's 1678 MCC, the Sycamore 16000) cannot scale large enough and are SONET/SDH based. The need is to be able to groom at the wavelength level. Current switch sizes (640Gbps, 1.2 Tbps for Sycamore) can’t scale so you have to place another switch and also use capacity to tie the switches together. The larger you grow the bigger the problem—you use 10% of capacity to tie two machines together, 20% to tie 3 together, etc.
In addition, older generation optical core switches are SONET/SDH-based and have trouble with Ethernet so they have to use the generic framing procedure/ virtual concatenation (GFP/VCAT) to manipulate the signal. When you move to OTN switching you don’t have to convert between protocols to switch through the matrix.
And yes, so far 4Tbps is the highest switch capacity per chassis.
As for the control plane, ASON automates configuration so it is more applicable for turning up and down bandwidth. In Alcatel-Lucent’s case, it is integrating the control planes across its product portfolio which gives visibility across the entire network. Although router offload is a key application for the device, you don’t necessarily need a control plane to do it.
IP routing is much more expensive (per bit) then wavelength switching. The idea is to switch at the lowest network layer possible. People have been using an inverted triangle with 4 layers to illustrate. IP routing is at the top followed by layer-2 switching, TDM/OTN switching and then wavelength switching.
Eve Griliches, managing partner, ACG Research
The 1870 TTS isn’t a new platform class but the platforms in general are new. Huawei, Fujitsu, Tellabs, Cisco and various others have platforms all geared towards this but most are missing some element today. In this case, Alacatel-Lucent is still missing the optical portion of the product [DWDM and ROADM].
The platform is starting out as a large OTN and packet switch which will eventually turn into a full packet optical transport product - that is my estimate. Each vendor is approaching this area differently, suffice to say, I think this is an OK and decent approach.
The GMPLS/ ASON control plane technology means the 1870 TTS can manage the optical and IP layers together. Some providers want that, some don't.
Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst, optical, Infonetics Research
The 1870 TTS is a lot like the 1850, just bigger. I suspect much of the new functionality in the 1870 will migrate down to the 1850.
It is significant as there are not that many boxes - none, really - that can do converged SDH/OTN/layer-2 switching all on one backplane. Several other vendors such as Ciena with its 5400, Cyan and Tellabs are going in this direction but Alcatel-Lucent has some legitimacy since it already was out with the 1850. Only the Fujitsu 9500 is in this class.
GMPLS/ ASON allow routers to communicate with the layer one infrastructure and set up and tear down paths as needed. It gives the router visibility into the lower layers of the OSI stack.
I think the key point is really the 1870 TTS’s 4Tbps switch capacity. This box represents the cutting edge of converged layer-1 plus layer-2 packet optical transport system technology.
Now we will see whether carriers adopt this architecture or whether they use IP over WDM or OTN switching only.
The Alcatel-Lucent 1870 TSS: the two central cards, larger than a shelf, each contain four 1Tbps universal switch ICs. There are two cards per platform as one is used for redundancy.