The Optical Internetworking Forum has named the 10 vendors participating its new interoperability test of data and control plan technologies, announced last month.
These include Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena Corp., Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Marben Products, NEC Corporation of America, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Sycamore Networks, Tellabs and ZTE.
The test is tackling transport technologies, including OTN, PBB-TE, T-MPLS/MPLS-TP and SONET/SDH as well as multidomain service restoration.
The test phase of the event has been underway since March in the following carrier labs: China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom Group, KDDI R&D Labs, NTT, Telecom Italia and Verizon. The test sites are linked via virtual or real E-NNI connections, forming a global test network topology. The event enables testing with more vendor implementations, allowing carriers to access additional network resources beyond the boundaries of their existing networks on a global scale.
The demo will culminate in regional live showcases at iPOP, June 11 in Tokyo, Japan; OIF Carrier Day, which will be held in June in the United States and will be by invitation only; and IIR WDM and Next Generation Networking, June 25 in Nice, France.
"Participating vendors are testing a diverse range of technologies supporting carrier Ethernet services, using the OIF’s control plane IAs to demonstrate dynamic multi-vendor interoperability,” said Lyndon Ong of Ciena and the OIF’s Technical Committee chair. “The OIF global demo tests vendors’ ability to meet carrier transport needs in advanced technology, requiring vendors to install their products in carrier labs and support round the clock testing of the functionality and reliability of their optical equipment under the parameters of the OIF’s IAs.”
Interoperability testing of heterogeneous network equipment includes multiservice optical network platforms, optical transport switches, ROADMs, NG SONET/SDH ADMs, digital and optical cross connects, carrier Ethernet multiservice switches, and carrier packet transport products.
