Eight top equipment vendors will showcase interoperability in a multicarrier environment during the Optical Internetworking Forum’s Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration – Demand Ethernet Services event.
Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena Corp., Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Marben Products, Sycamore Networks, Tellabs and ZTE will take part. Participating OIF carrier members include AT&T Inc., China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom Group, KDDI, Telecom Italia and Verizon Communications Inc..
The test phase of the event has been underway in carrier labs since June. Interoperability testing of heterogeneous network equipment includes MSPPs, routers, Ethernet switches, cross-connects, OADMs in the data plane and embedded and proxy controllers in the control plane.
“The multivendor aspect of the interoperability testing gives carriers confidence that different vendor and technology domains can work together,” said Jim Jones of Alcatel-Lucent and the OIF’s Technical Committee chair. “This type of interoperability testing is essential for transitioning new technology from labs to carrier networks.”
OIF participating members are demonstrating end-to-end provisioning of dynamic switched Ethernet services over multiple, control-plane enabled intelligent optical core networks through the use of OIF implementation agreements UNI 2.0 and E-NNI including:
• Ethernet private line – allowing carriers to leverage existing TDM infrastructure to carry Ethernet.
• Neighbor discovery – automating what is currently a manual provision process between neighbors.
• Control plane failure recovery – a carrier-class reliability feature.
• Non-disruptive bandwidth modification – optimizes network operation and
resources by adapting to bursty data traffic flows.
Combining service provider private testing and a public demonstration, the effort is based on intra-lab testing among each of the participating carrier sites. The test sites are linked via virtual or real E-NNI connections. The event enables testing with more vendor implementations, allowing carriers to access additional network resources beyond the boundaries of their existing networks.
A public demonstration will take place Sept. 17-19 at ECOC 2007 in Berlin.
Optical Internetworking Forum www.oiforum.com
