Optical networking is becoming much more flexible and manageable, as carriers add services like Ethernet to their portfolios, various data services increase bandwidth requirements and there’s a push toward bandwidth on demand.
That new flexibility is developing on many fronts. For example, small form factor “pizza box”devices now allow carriers to add capacity and functionality to their networks without expensive upgrades and within the same network management constructs. At the same time, there are key technologies such as generic framing procedure (GFP), resilient packet ring (RPR) and virtual concatenation (VC) enabling that new flexibility and manageability within SONET networks. And some new products also offer greater reach than was possible in the recent past.
GFP
GFP has emerged as an industry standard for the encapsulation of data protocols like Fibre Channel, FICON, gigabit Ethernet, etc. over SONET/SDN. By adding GFP support to their optical platforms, vendors help service providers create flexible Ethernet service offerings based on industry-approved standards. Additionally, GFP also has increased robustness for Ethernet services by providing fault information, including Client Signal Failure notifications, through the management overhead, according to Fujitsu Network Communications Inc.
Fujitsu last month added support for GFP and VC to its FLASHWAVE 4500 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP) to enable efficient transport of 10mbps, 100mbps and gigabit Ethernet services. Support for four fiber-bidirectional line switched ring (4F-BLSR) applications at an OC192 rate on the FLASHWAVE 4500 provides additional capacity and a protection option for service providers.
Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies Inc. pioneered GFP, which was introduced more than a year ago, says Fady Masoud, metro edge marketing manager at Nortel, which at SUPERCOMM demonstrated interoperability between its Optical Multiservice Edge next-gen SONET/SDH solution and its Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 Layer 2/3 IP MPLS edge product.
Turin Networks also supports key standards, including GFP, LCAS (link capacity adjustment scheme) and both low-order and high-order VC in its TraverseEdge 100 (TE-100) products.
Additionally, Turin’s TE-100 includes fullfledged Ethernet switching capability, which Kevin Wade, Turin’s director or product marketing, says other products don’t provide.
That enables the TE-100 pizza box add/drop multiplexer to aggregate and manage traffic at Layer 2 and support next-generation Ethernet services such as multipoint VPNs. Wade says Ethernet switching also lets service providers do rate shaping, which enables them to offer end users a wider variety of bandwidth increments and better control over the Ethernet service within a metropolitan network — so the provider can have multiple customer sites on one metro network, for example.
The SONET version of the TE-100 will be available this quarter, with the SDH version expected out in the fourth quarter. Prices will start at $7,000.
Nortel’s Masoud says without pizza box products offered by many companies today, service providers were forced to add another shelf of equipment every time they exceeded a T1 on a shelf. That required sending people into the field, managing a new shelf and buying new equipment. “If you stack multiple shelves, you end up with a complex network,” he says. “But you don’t need to add another shelf if you just add a pizza box connected to next-gen SONET [gear] and [those devices] are all managed as a single network element, so you don’t exhaust maximum number of nodes.” With pizza boxes from Nortel, which came out with the products a few years ago, the OPTera Metro 3500 can support 1,008 DS1s and the 6500 can support up to 8,000 DSIs.
RPR
Of course, RPR is another next-gen optical networking standard. Like GFP, it’s not new, but it is becoming more mature. RPR technology is designed to allow both traditional TDM and packet- based services to flow over the same optical infrastructure in a more bandwidth-efficient manner than can be done with SONET alone.
At SUPERCOMM last month, Corrigent Systems participated in a Metro Ethernet Forum event showing what Gady Rosenfeld, director of marketing and product strategy at Corrigent, says was the first standards-based RPR protection switching demonstration. Rosenfeld says RPR recently concluded the balloting phase to become an IEEE standard.
Corrigent’s core product is a packet-based ADM combining RPR, MPLS and Ethernet for costeffective transport of packet-centric applications. The company, which has publicly named just one customer — Japan’s Vic Tokai, at SUPERCOMM showed how its CM100 ADM can let service providers provision services end-to-end across SONET or MPLS and turn services on with a mouse click using RPR and MPLS signaling, says Rosenfeld.
Nortel’s Masoud says next on the agenda is adding GFP and bandwidth to RPR.
VC, Long Reach and More
Another popular new term in optical circles is virtual concatenation. That’s the ability to “rightsize” bandwidth to carry signals in a cost-effective way, says Nortel’s Masoud. This capability, available in a variety of products, is already in use by many service providers. Another recent development in next-gen SONET is expanding distance capabilities.
For example, Nortel’s 3500 and 6500 platforms enable storage services to travel thousands of kilometers over SONET or SDH connections, says Masoud, noting the company has not yet announced any service provider customers for this application.
Cisco Systems Inc. at SUPERCOMM last month launched enhancements to its 15454 optical MSPP, which integrates SONET and DWDM technology. Included in those enhancements is additional reach, which means amplifiers are required only every 100 to 120 kilometers. Other new features in the 15454 include a reconfigurable ADM capability that allows service providers to drop any wavelength anywhere, rather than having to do all network planning upfront; additional muxsponders and transponders allowing carriers to mux gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and FICON/ESCON services onto a single wavelength; and an increase of tunability on the 10gig transponder.
Also last month at SUPERCOMM, Meriton Networks Inc. came out with the second release of its HSM architecture, moving it from metro to regional and long-haul applications. That included 10gig support using pluggable XFPs; allowing 10 and 2.5gig signals to be supported over one fiber; reconfigurable ADMs that allow carriers to remotely add and drop wavelengths; and optical amplifiers with a reach of 600 kilometers.
