Fiber-to-the-home networks service more than 130 households today, and PON is the dominant FTTH architecture. This trend is expected to continue, with 90 percent of the forecast 300 million FTTH subscribers by 2019 to be served by PON, according to Ovum.
As PON subscriber numbers grow, so will the types of users it can address. And that will include enterprise customers. That said, TWDM is the best and obvious way forward for service providers in the GPON realm, according to Ana Pesovic, senior marketing for wireline networks at Alcatel-Lucent who in a recent TechZine posting, TWDM technology moves ahead: XG-PON1, explains why TWDM is superior to XG-PON1 on a number of fronts. These include from a bandwidth perspective, in terms of revenue potential, and in its ability to lower carrier risk.
Ovum backs up those statements in its recent article TWDM-PON is on the horizon: Facilitating fast FTTx network monetization, in which the firm suggests that communications services providers would do well to leapfrog XG-PON1 and move on to TWDM-PON.
Ovum explains the case for TWDM citing its ability to:
“Now is the time CSPs should begin evaluating TWDM PON, analyzing deployment scenarios in terms of operational and monetary benefits,” Ovum suggests.
Pesvoic of Alcatel-Lucent, which launched its Universal TWDM-PON technology solution last year, agrees, commenting: “TWDM-PON lets operators offer high revenue generating commercial services, consolidate all services (residential, business and mobile backhaul) over one network, or perhaps co-invest to share deployment cost and risk. As a result, TWDM-PON monetizes the network faster.”
]]>A recent Alcatel-Lucent application note, The large enterprise has changed, gave an interesting snapshot of large enterprise IT today.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent, The large enterprise has changed
Based on this, it stressed that large enterprises have networking and communications infrastructure needs that are surprisingly similar to those of the network operators themselves, thanks to the growing importance of having employees connected with the bandwidth, security and reliability they need to do their jobs efficiently and effectively.
What this means is that large enterprises should start thinking like a network operator. This includes having telecom-grade IP platform infrastructure in place to support employee connectivity.
Specifically, large enterprise should think about using data center automation that can take advantage of technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN). With something like Alcatel-Lucent’s Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform, large enterprises can deliver SDN capabilities including centralized, policy-driven networking, simplified configuration and compliance automation.
Large enterprises also should have virtualized network services that can leverage SDN to create wide area networks (WANs) that can use best of breed technology and avoid proprietary lock-in.
In terms of the cloud, large enterprises are overwhelmingly deploying private clouds. Large enterprises should make sure they have a turnkey solution in place to make those deployments easy and also flexible enough to support web-based applications and mobile apps.
In thinking like telecoms, large enterprises additionally should consider optical transport and data center interconnect.
Optical transport delivers the bandwidth and speed that large enterprises need to keep up with network demand, and data center interconnect delivers the flexibility and capacity for faster service turn-up and assured business continuity while improving asset utilization and lowering costs. Data center interconnect brings scalable, secure, high-performing, multi-site data center connectivity for the cloud era.
Network connectivity is a key component of every business, especially for large enterprises. As a result, businesses need to learn from network operators and consider investing in similar technologies when it comes to their own connectivity projects.
New Zealand is a remote place, which may explain why most people know little more about it than that it served as the backdrop for the Lord of the Rings movies.
The now-concluded HBO series Flight of the Concords also had a lot of references to New Zealand, but it could be tough to discern which ones were real (I checked, and it seems there actually is a toothbrush fence) and which were created for comedy value.
In any case, there’s now a real and important effort going on in New Zealand that involves the creation of a nationwide ultra-broadband network. That state-of-the-art network will help New Zealand’s citizenry and businesses communicate with one another and the rest of the world, and to access existing and next generation information and applications. It’s also intended to make New Zealand a more important player on the world economic stage and to give the country a competitive edge over others in attracting business.
“Having that ubiquitous broadband access in a country like New Zealand that has a strong theme of ingenuity and entrepreneurship, this allows them access to global markets, and I think it brings a lot of things beyond what you can measure on the macro level at the micro level, which is really important to the local communities,” explains Sean O’Halloran, CSO at Alcatel-Lucent, a key supplier for the New Zealand effort.
In fact, New Zealand’s push for nationwide broadband is the subject of an interesting case study and two videos by Alcatel-Lucent. The first is about the case study in general and the second includes and an interesting interview which includes comments by Hon Steven Joyce, New Zealand Minister for Economic Development.
The New Zealand government set up Crown Fibre Holdings to spearhead the ultra-broadband effort. Crown Fibre Holdings decided to create a private-public partnership to spread the project’s risk and contracted with local fiber companies to deploy the open access infrastructure. Chorus was awarded 70 percent of the build; three other companies are sharing the remainder of the business.
Chorus is leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s GPON access technology to enable 100mbps download and 50mbps upload rates. It’s also using Alcatel-Lucent’s IP multiservice core platform further upstream. Alcatel-Lucent, which is the communications system integrator for the New Zealand build, is also providing 24-hour management and fault rectification services to Chorus as a managed service. In addition to operating the NOC, Alcatel-Lucent is heading up an ng Connect effort in New Zealand to support market trials and other work to support the creation of new and innovative applications and services.
Already, dairy farmers – who once had to record data about cows in a book and then re-enter that information in a computer later on – now can access and enter needed information wherever they are from smartphones. Meanwhile, the New Zealand government is integrating the online experience into education and has implemented a rent to own device program in select low-income areas in the country. Cloud-based businesses in the New Zealand, such as point of sale software provider, are also excited about how the ultra-broadband network will help them support and grow their companies.
The ultra-broadband network also sets the stage for broadband service providers to leverage that connectivity and pair it with data analytics to create new opportunities in advertising, retail, municipal, and other business environments. That includes faster price optimization in stores, the ability to offer real-time maintenance on cars and other items, and more.
New Zealand, which currently has a population of 4.5 million, plans to bring the ultra-broadband network to 86 percent of its rural customers by 2016, and to 75 percent of its citizens by 2020. It expects the network to create $26 billion in value over 20 years.
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Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) enables providers to deliver more bandwidth and better services to customers, but service provisioning can be a substantial headache since FTTH networks are shared and therefore the optical network terminal (ONT) location is not known. Not knowing the ONT location, currently operators must send a technician to the customer’s home to establish the right location and apply service provisioning.
Alcatel-Lucent understands this problem well, and it has taken steps to ease the pain of FTTH service provisioning by developing its ONT Easy Start solution.
The premise of the solution is a simple one: Set up an automated provisioning system that only requires shipping the customer the hardware (or having them pick it up), activation and a web browser. Once a subscription has been initiated and the customer has logged into the web portal, the service provisioning is set up automatically, both testing and activating the ONT for the customer.
For new FTTH installations, a technician still must come and lay fiber. But Alcatel-Lucent’s ONT Easy Start ensures that the process of provisioning is both easy and error-proof since the technician then just uses the automated process once the fiber has been laid. And for customers who already have the option of FTTP, ONT Easy Start makes it painless.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent
The ONT Easy Start solution relies on several network components.
To start, a full FTTH network with optical line terminal (OLT) at the central office, as well as an ONT with the end user are needed. Layer 2 provisioning is performed by the (EMS) system while optionally Layer 3 is provisioned by the access management system (ACS). Additionally, inventory systems, customer relationship management systems, and other components may interface with the solution. Lastly, the operator’s OSS/BSS needs to communicate with all these components. Taken together, the management of these disparate components is quite complex.
The solution also offers additional components that make FTTH service provisioning easier. These include the Motive Network Analyzer, a cost-effective remote management solution for fiber access networks that allows operators to perform additional line testing to ensure the quality of the fiber connection before provisioning the ONT; the Motive Field Tech Console, which handles service tickets in the case of installation problems; and the Motive Universal Device Manager, which automatically handles Layer 3 provisioning of the ONT.
FTTH service provisioning does not have to be hard with the right tools.
]]>From original Alcatel-Lucent TechZine posting
IP/optical integration typically results in cost savings, but maintaining service availability is also essential when measuring total return on investment (ROI). An analysis of 3 modes of operation found multi-layer protection and restoration to be the most cost efficient while meeting availability requirements.
Run a hotter network without traffic melt downs
Service providers are always looking for ways to run their networks hotter in order to maximize returns on network investments. But when trying to economize it is important to keep an eye on service availability, as the cost of service outages can easily undo any savings.
Traditional 1+1 optical network protection keeps 50% of network capacity in reserve. The alternative approach of only leveraging MPLS-based protection and restoration mechanisms at the routing layer is equally inefficient, even though these inefficiencies are less immediately apparent. Nevertheless, in many networks this is the present mode of operation (PMO).
State-of-the-art optical transport networks and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer technologies do provide a better alternative. Agile optical transport and an intelligent control plane enable transport layer resiliency with a cost-effective utilization of networks resources.
These protection capabilities leverage the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS – RFC 3945) architecture. GMPLS adopts key concepts from the MPLS control plane used in IP routing with functional enhancements to support multi-layer optical transport networks.
Figure 1. GMPLS protection and restoration options
Service providers can leverage GMPLS to drastically expand their existing toolkit of network traffic protection and restoration capabilities (Figure 1, left). With the right architecture, GMPLS-based transport layer recovery can be combined with protection mechanisms in the IP/MPLS routing layer to offer and implement differentiated availability service level agreements (SLAs) for different classes of service (Figure 1, right).
SLA requirements can subsequently be mapped on an appropriate multi-layer traffic protection and restoration strategy in order to balance availability, redundancy and resource utilization for the best returns on network investments.
Bell Labs TCO study on multi-layer cost synergies
Alcatel-Lucent commissioned Bell Labs to compare the relative cost of MPLS and GMPLS-based resiliency mechanisms. The TCO analysis is based on a backbone reference network consisting of 6 core routing nodes and 5 optical transport nodes. The physical transport network topology is partially meshed, while the core routing topology is a logical mesh.
The network resource requirements for a mixed traffic matrix were compared, with traffic growing evenly at 40% annually over a 5 year study period:
The study compared 3 different network protection and restoration strategies (Figure 2):
Present mode of operation (PMO)
The PMO applied 1+1 redundant LSPs with MPLS fast reroute over unprotected but physically disjoint transport links to protect EF traffic end-to-end against multiple failures, with very fast restoration times below 50 msec.
AF traffic is carried by non-redundant LSPs with MPLS fast reroute over unprotected but physically disjoint transport links. For BE it uses N+1 unprotected, physically disjoint LSPs in an ECMP load sharing model. This scheme protects against capacity degradation when a single LSP or optical link segment fails.
Future mode of operation 1 (FMO1)
FMO1 applies optical segments with GMPLS 1+1 protection and restoration combined to protect IP overlay traffic, which protects EF traffic against multiple failures with a restoration time below 50 msec. The difference with the PMO is that service restoration is transparent to the IP layer and acts on aggregated traffic in the optical transport layer.
Future mode of operation 2 (FMO2)
FMO2 applies a combination of MPLS fast reroute over optical transport links with GMPLS guaranteed restoration to protect both EF and AF traffic against multiple failures, with rapid protection switching within 50 msec.
As wavelength restoration times at the photonic switching layer are in the order of seconds, MPLS FRR provides rapid restoration over alternate optical segments while the failed primary segment is being restored by GMPLS. Optical segments will be able to share spare resources for restoration purposes. During FRR restoration, full bandwidth recovery is guaranteed for EF traffic only, which means that potentially packet loss can occur for AF traffic in case of failure.
Figure 2. Network service protection and restoration strategies for IP over DWDM
Study results on multi-layer cost synergies
Optical transport network costs are mostly determined by the amount of optical transponders required and wavelength consumption. Optical transponder count tracks closely to router port requirements, and are by far the most expensive component in the optical transport path, while wavelength consumption can impact the scaling requirements of intermediate ROADM systems that are switching the wavelengths.
The study results in Figure 3 indicate that FMO2 requires 46% fewer optical transponders over the 5 year period than the PMO, and even 10% fewer than FMO1. FMO2 shows significant cost savings over PMO in the initial years, with 47% savings over PMO and 51% savings over FM01 in Year 1.
Figure 3. Summary of network TCO savings
In the initial years, the transport network build-out is driven by 100GE connectivity requirements for the IP link topology — and many wavelengths will be lightly loaded.
FMO1 starts out with the largest cost because its connectivity requirements are higher than PMO and FMO2 due to the need for 1+1 link redundancy to protect EF and AF traffic, which results in a full mesh.
The PMO and FMO2 link topologies, on the other hand, are only partially meshed because MPLS FRR and GMPLS guaranteed restoration can dynamically create detours around link failures.
As traffic grows and wavelengths fill up, the incremental network build out is primarily driven by capacity growth and FMO1 catches up in cost over the PMO due to its greater efficiency.
FMO1 and FMO2 are virtually tied in the amount of router ports required, both consuming 37% less 100GE ports than the PMO over the 5 year period. The PMO consumes more router ports and optical transponders because it relies on intermediate routers to restore traffic on failed segments through MPLS 1+1 protection and FRR. FMO1 and FMO2, on the other hand, can restore optical link segments in the transport layer itself through GMPLS.
FMO1 and FMO2 can deploy transport layer shortcuts and build direct adjacencies between routers, which reduces the amount of router hops in the data path and consequently the amount of router ports and optical transponders.
The FMO2 using multi-layer protection and restoration is more cost efficient than FMO1 in the initial build-out years of the network, and effectively accelerates the cost savings of FMO1 by 4 to 5 years. The reason is that both the FMO2 and PMO link topology only need to be partially meshed due to the ability to use dynamic restoration (MPLS FRR over GMPLS GR), while the FMO1 link topology is fully meshed due to the use of 1+1 link protection.
Although FMO1 has a higher connectivity requirement than FMO2 and PMO in the initial years, it rapidly catches up in later years when the further network build-out is driven by incremental capacity needs. FMO1 surpasses the PMO in Year 1.5 because GMPLS-based protection of aggregate traffic at the optical transport layer is more resource efficient than using MPLS-based protection at the routing layer.
FMO2 is able to maintain its initial cost advantage also in later years because it benefits from the same incremental GMPLS cost savings as FMO1, while enjoying additional savings from deploying GMPLS UNI as well. Cost savings are predominantly obtained from the way that EF and AF traffic is being carried in the various mode of operation, because best effort traffic is unprotected in each mode of operation with 1+N passive redundancy.
Service availability
The average service availability calculations for each traffic category in each mode of operation verify that the various network protection and restoration schemes do not trade off a lower cost against reduced service availability.
Figure 4. Service availability comparison
The results in Figure 4 show that for the given link availability, failure rate, and mean time to repair of fiber cuts, it is possible to meet the service availability expectation with any of the 3 design options.
Yet FMO1 and FMO2 meet these levels of service availability in a far more cost effective manner. In addition, the multi-layer protection and restoration FMO2 offers the highest and quickest returns on investments.
Related Material
To contact the author or request additional information, please send an email to techzine.editor@alcatel-lucent.com.
]]>For what seems like ages now the communications industry has been talking about convergence. We have already gone through many phases as networks move from TDM to being end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) with voice traffic increasingly being carried on converged networks. Indeed, the popularity of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and the coming of Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) on mobile networks is the future.
That said, convergence is not just about IP but is also about the transformation of global network infrastructures in the wired world, with legs into the wireless one as well, of IP and Optics. And, as Steve Vogelsang, VP Strategy and CTO, IP Routing and Transport Business Division, Alcatel-Lucent noted in a recent TechZine blog, IP and optics: Time to make nice, “Let’s face it. The future of the communications industry requires a convergence of IP and optics. So maybe it’s time to give each other some overdue respect."
Vogelsang starts with the acknowledgment that: “Optical networking is very different from IP networking. The base system designs and some of the underlying technology are similar, but the design goals and resulting optimizations are quite different.” He continues by saying reality is that, “IP and Optics are destined to come together. “
Vogelsang then goes on to provide four insightful observations about IP and Optical convergence that are good food for thought. The four are:
Vogelsang proceeds to delve into an interesting discussion as to what needs to be addressed to get to IP and optical convergence. He notes that: “The first problem to solve is automating the optical layer, because much of what happens, even today, involves hands-on setup. ROADMs were a great start, but they only allow automation of the middle of the route, but not the ingress and egress points. Next-generation ROADMs solve a lot of these issues by making them colorless, directionless, contentionless (CDC) and, for networks over 100 Gbit/s, flexible (CDCF). But the key will be getting the routing layer to talk intelligently to the optical control layer and vice versa.”
How the network of the future gets to being ultra-broadband, including that of mobile operators, is going to be through IP and Optical integration in almost every part of the infrastructure. And, while we are not there yet, as Vogelsang says, “There is a lot of sophisticated and tricky maneuvering happening at the optical layer, which few IP engineers recognize or understand. While that was OK in the past, it is entirely insufficient today.” It is the reason the title of his posting about now being the time for IP and optical engineers to “make nice” is not just an observation but should be construed as a call to action.
]]>It goes without saying anymore that people and businesses in an increasingly connected world rely on the Internet for personal and commercial communication. We are also in the midst of a continuing migration of people are increasingly moving to cities as the world is becoming more urbanized. What has also become clear is that cities with a smart grid and a solid IP infrastructure thrive more than cities that do not. The case for the smart city has never been stronger.
First, the demographic shift: Roughly half of the world’s population lived in an urban area in 2010. By 2050, according to the World Health Organization, nearly 7 out of 10 people will live in an urban environment. Unsurprisingly, by 2025 there will be 37 mega-cities with a population above 10 million people, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
This alone should be reason for government and industry to come together and invest in the network resources to support this city population. But there is good economic reason, too.
Cities with good broadband infrastructure reap the benefits, according to stats compiled in a recent TechZine posting, Smart cities are built on smart networks, by Marc Jadoul, Strategic Marketing Director, and Jacques Vermeulen, Director, Global Solution Leader for Smart Government, Alcatel-Alcatel-Lucent. As the authors note, a 10 percent increase in broadband penetration produces between 0.25 and 3.6 percent growth in GDP, and 80 new jobs are created for every 1,000 additional broadband users. Further, broadband is responsible for 20 percent of new jobs across all businesses, and 30 percent of new jobs in businesses with less than 20 employees.
But what does it mean to be a smart city?
First, it means having a city-net based on wireline and wireless broadband networks that give access to a high-capacity IP and optical communications infrastructure.
Second, it means investment. Smart cities invest in data centers and a government cloud, control platforms for multimedia and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
Third, once the foundation is laid, the city’s public infrastructure (including buildings, public space, roads, traffic lights, parking, etc.) is optimized for peak efficiency and environmental preservation.
“Elements like a smart grid helps reduce CO2 footprint and energy bills, and wireless sensors can continuously monitor and control pollution, lighting, and waste,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post.
Fourth, entrepreneurship is leveraged to create new applications to enrich daily life of all citizens. New York City, for instance, relies upon third-party developers for apps that make its metro easier to navigate.
Participation is also key. In fact, community engagement is a crucial factor for successful smart city rollout. This includes citizen participation, feedback loops, as well as social media interaction and dedicated community portals.
The case for the smart city is obvious. But will government heed the call.
Triple play was a good start. But Cable multiple-system operators (MSOs) must continue their evolution.
Cable MSOs have been leading the residential entertainment and communication services segment for years. The expansion of their service offerings from broadcast video to video-on-demand, high-speed Internet and voice has enabled MSOs to expand their market share in the face of changing technology and viewing preferences. But to stay competitive, cable MSOs cannot rest on their laurels.
The explosion of connected devices, competition building Gigabit networks over fiber, the expansion of over-the-top applications such as Skype and the evolution of higher quality video such as 4K resolution are demanding that cable MSOs continue to beef up their access networks.
The access technology of choice for most cable MSOs is some form of passive optical network (PON) technology. There are four leading PON variants.
First, there is Ethernet PON (EPON). This delivers 1 Gbps symmetrical bandwidth, which is good for speeds of multiple 100 Mbps. Being symetrical, this technology is best suited for commercial services.
Second, there is 10G EPON. It provides 10 Gbps symmetrical bandwidth to cover the needs of multiple 1 Gbps.
The third option is GPON. GPON delivers bandwidth of 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.25 Gbps upstream, and is the most widely deployed PON technology in fiber networks worldwide, according to a recent blog TechZine post by Els Baert , Fixed Networks Product Manager, Alcatel-Lucent, Cable MSOs—Full speed ahead with PON
Then there is TWDM PON, the newest evolution of PON technologies. TWDM PON stacks multiple wavelengths on the same fiber, and each wavelength provides a variety of upstream and downstream bandwidths: 2.5G/1.25G, 10G/1G and 10G/10G.
“Considering these options, our recommendation is a combination of 10G EPON and DPoE [CableLabs’ DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON],” noted Baert. She added that: “Together they allow cable MSOs to extend their reach into the mid-market and large enterprise segments while preparing for the Gigabit needs of residential customers.”
Whatever PON technology cable MSOs choose, however, they can scarcely afford to stop evolving and growing their IP networks.
]]>Anyone who knows “futbol” (aka “soccer” in the U.S. and “football” elsewhere) knows how enormously popular it is in Latin America. Hence, being able to provide as many fans as possible great inside and particularly remote from stadium user experiences has become something of an obsession. Illustrative of this is that thanks to its newly installed 100G ultra-broadband network, Colombia’s mobile provider, UNE, was able to debut widespread streaming video services in time for the recent 2014 FIFA World Cup. This meant its subscribers could have quality viewing experiences over their smart TVs, tablets and smartphones.
Columbia, like many countries, is in the midst of an explosion in interest in streaming video, and meeting this demand meant need, of course, requires better infrastructure. In fact, Columbia has been working hard to build its high-speed infrastructure, and it has grown its Internet connectivity by roughly 300 percent in the past 2.5 years, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent case study, UNE Secures Colombia’s Ultra-broadband Future with 100Gbps Network.
Colombia’s growing its infrastructure highlights some of the problems that are common with connectivity in emerging economies—namely, dealing with the needs of large territories with widely dispersed urban centers and chronic constraints on NOC space and power consumption.
“Integrating the legacy infrastructure—in this case, the optics management system and unused fiber—with the ultra-broadband network, is also daunting on the professional services front,” noted Earl Kennedy Earl Kennedy, IP Transport Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent, in a recent TechZine article on the UNE network deployment. “Indeed, the heart of UNE’s challenge is nation-building—extending UNE’s fiber-optic network to connect 1,053 municipalities, 50 percent of small- and medium-sized enterprises, and 50 percent of Colombian households by the end of this year.”
As a result, the top priority for UNE is to sustain momentum by growing capacity.
To meet this challenge, UNE looked to Alcatel-Lucent for its optical 100G infrastructure.
“We needed integration for the management system that we had been using for several years, and we were able to gain peace-of-mind knowing that the previous technology, which also had been deployed by Alcatel-Lucent, and had served us well, would be easier to integrate with the new network,” noted Alejandro Toro, network engineering and operations director for UNE.
He added: “Other considerations, such as the maturity of the platform, capacity, and power efficiency, posed even bigger challenges, and Alcatel-Lucent exceeded the qualifications of other providers for addressing those.”
The Alcatel-Lucent solution provided the relief that the capacity-strapped UNE needed, bridged incomplete fiber spans up to 180 kilometers long, and did it all with significantly less space and power use than the typical deployment requires.
And, Alcatel-Lucent did it in time for the FIFA World Cup, making Columbia’s sports fans very, very happy.
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It has been called the “data storm;” due to increased online video usage, the cloud, and mobile devices, bandwidth demand is increasing relentlessly, and operators are straining to keep up.
Research from Bell Labs suggests that from 2013 to 2017, operators will see a 550 percent increase in bandwidth demand due to the shift to cloud and a 720 percent increase in bandwidth to support IP video across fixed and mobile networks. This will result in a 320 percent increase in the amount of traffic in the core network.
“Telecom operators are starting to realize that simply increasing the line rate is no longer sufficient to control the costs associated with increasing bandwidth demands,” noted David Stokes of Alcatel-Lucent in a recent TechZine article, Optical transport networks and bandwidth demand. In fact, we really are seeing exponential traffic growth as recent research from Bell Labs below shows expected traffic growth from 2013 to 2017.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent
As Stokes explains in a podcast on the subject, Optical transport networks (OTN) are increasingly being used to help meet this demand. OTN is a set of optical network elements connected by optical fiber links that provides transport, multiplexing, switching, management, supervision and survivability of optical channels carrying client signals.
A recent survey by Infonetics predicted that by 2016, 86 percent of respondents plan to use OTN switching in the core of their networks.
“OTN allows the photonic network to inherently support multiple protocols,” notes Stokes. “Transport rates have been defined to maximize network utilization for a photonic network carrying many different service types.”
The advantages of OTN for telecom operators are many, leading to an overall lower total cost of ownership for those that employ the technology.
Specifically, OTN enables better capacity utilization by eliminating stranded bandwidth and maximizing wavelength utilization. Through OTN, it is possible to add resiliency to legacy photonic networks where resiliency was previously not possible. Also, OTN can bring better service utilization and provisioning because OTN switching makes it easier for telecom providers to make service additions and changes.
“With optical transport networking, telecom operators can move to a single converged network capable of cost-effectively and efficiently transporting new and legacy services in a way that maximizes network utilization,” noted Stokes.
Given that demand is not expected to slow down any time soon, the converged network enabled by OTN cannot come quickly enough.
]]>Optical network operators have already made the move to 100G. But skyrocketing bandwidth demand means many are already pondering what’s next. With a 200G optical solution hitting the market, you probably have questions about when to move to 200G optical – and what you need to know when you make that move.
200G Optical: Move to Metro Creates Demand
If you are like most optical network operators, you are looking to move content closer to your end users. This is a good option to meet skyrocketing demand and relieve some of the pressure on today’s networks. While this is a practical solution, it will have consequences — dramatically shifting traffic from the optical core to the metro network.
As a result, you will need to bring long haul-type efficiencies to your metro. Agility, scalability, and software configurability will become increasingly critical.
Suddenly the question isn’t whether the market will go beyond 100G, but how soon. The 100G networks that were practically unimaginable four years ago already appear to have a finite shelf life.
Beyond 100G: What’s Next
When transitioning beyond 100G, there are a few considerations. Now that a 200G solution is commercially available and deployed by some operators, it’s an interesting option to consider. It gives you an immediate doubling in your capacity – so it’s very attractive purely to accommodate demand when and as you need it. But what are some of the other key ingredients you will want to see in your solution? It’s simple. You will want your solution to be:
And of course, it needs to be cost-efficient in order to support your return on investment.
200G Optical Networks: Critical Features
Let’s take a look at why each of these ingredients is so critical to deploying a successful 200G optical solution.
Agile
Today network operators are looking for solutions that optimize IP and optical networking equipment to reduce layers and complexity. They want one platform that collapses multiple networks into a single dynamic and reconfigurable multiservice, multilayer infrastructure that is efficient and agile. This will allow providers to support rapid delivery of high-performance, on-demand, application-driven network services.
Operators want network solutions that deliver multi-technology, multiservice architectures that serve as a single platform for applications such as business wholesale, mobile backhaul, IPTV, datacenter connectivity and enterprise vertical applications.
Scalable
Metro networks are forecasted to grow 560% in total traffic by the end of 2017. In order to meet that demand, networks deployed today will have to be scalable. The ability of a network to scale and aggregate wavelengths from 10G to 100G to 200G and beyond is of the utmost importance. It’s essential to meet the demand for dynamic services economically with terabit-scale and multilayer networking technologies in order to deliver a broad set of services at the most economical layer.
A flexible “metro core” architecture that supports network convergence with minimal impact to service operations or organizations is a vital part of moving metro networks forward. A scalable solution provides investment protection with the ability to double network capacity when you need it without incurring the upfront cost of buying twice the capacity you require today.
SDN-ready
Networks will need to address unpredictable and dynamic traffic demands as the number and complexity of services continue to grow. An optical network solution that is software configurable simplifies operations, increases service velocity and automates provisioning. Software defined networking (SDN) and a control plane automate the process of activating optical services.
SDN offers the promise of greater network agility and efficiency through multilayer resource discovery and control as well as dynamic path selection. Based on policy driven provisioning, SDN simplifies and automates service creation resulting in rapid service innovation and delivery. Solutions that are software configurable lay the framework needed to implement SDN in the future.
A software configurable 100G/200G solution that allows a doubling of capacity with the touch of a button, results in a faster time to revenue.
Cost-efficiency
A network that is agile, scalable and programmable is critical to minimizing CAPEX and OPEX. Agile optical networks are able to meet demand for dynamic services economically. Scalable solutions that prevent costly overbuilds and recurring investments in space and power will be paramount going forward.
A programmable solution drives higher network utilization without sacrificing network or service reliability.
Finally optical network intelligence helps to monetize network assets by shortening delivery times and reducing operating expenses typically associated with provisioning and maintenance.
Protect your optical network
To keep up with surging broadband traffic volumes, service providers in virtually every market are moving their optical transmission networks to 40G and 100G. But how long will this be enough? Consider a move to 200G. You can protect your network from the prospect of premature fiber exhaustion. And you can avoid investment in costly photonic overlays.
Podcast Link.
Find out more about the Alcatel-Lucent 200G optical solution
With adequate bandwidth and network speeds now a cornerstone of life for both businesses and consumers, optical transport is increasingly becoming a key solution for network operators.
The market for optical network equipment is expected to reach $15 billion by 2018, according to research firm, Dell’Oro. Optical transport of the 100G variety is expected to make up 80 percent of that demand.
Communications Industry Researchers (CIR) also recently released a report predicting that the market for 400G will hit $528 million by 2019, and the market for supporting optical components and silicon devices will reach $195 million that year.
Clearly, optical networking matters. It is easy to see why when looking at the recent achievements of Alcatel-Lucent’s agile optical networking technologies.
Alcatel-Lucent has achieved real-world speeds of 1.4 Terabits per second (Tb/s) with spectral efficiency of 5.7 bits per second per Hertz (b/s/Hz) over a 410km stretch of live fiber in field trials with BT in the U.K.
Making it possible was the flexible grid infrastructure used by Alcatel-Lucent, along with its 400G Photonic Service Engine (PSE) technology on the 1830 Photonic Service Switch. It help achieved a 42.5 percent improvement in spectral efficiency, according to the company.
Türk Telekom in Turkey also has been showing the advantages of packet optical transport. The company recently broke the Guinness World Record for data transmission rate, reaching 8 Tb/s over a single fiber cable in a commercial network. They broke the record using 100G optical technology between Ankara and Istanbul.
From France to Russia, leading service providers also are moving toward optical network innovations by the company.
“The growing appetite for bandwidth hungry mobile devices and applications is driving tremendous demand throughout our network and taking this approach provides high-capacity with the flexibility and efficiency to serve our customers today and in the future,” noted Hassan Kabbani in a statement, CEO of Zain KSA in Saudi Arabia, which recently completed testing of ultra-broadband throughout the kingdom through the use of optical transport.
“It’s clear that with the rise in adoption of smartphones and the growing demand for high-bandwidth services in the cloud accessible across both fixed and mobile networks – operators are striving to increase capacity and speed, but they also want to protect their existing investments,” noted Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routing and transport division. He said this is what agile optical networking is all about.
Spoiler alert: The added capacity of 100G-capable transport systems will not be enough to meet the coming demand within Metro Transport Networks.
First, there are numbers that have service providers worried. A recent Bell Labs study showed that metro traffic will grow by more than 560 percent by 2017, twice the growth of backbone network traffic. The biggest drivers will be video and cloud traffic. Bell Labs also predicts that while 57 percent of network traffic terminated in the metro back in 2012, by 2017 a full 75 percent of traffic will terminate within metro networks.
Meeting this demand within metro networks is of crucial importance for network operators, and for some the solution is adding higher capacity 100G-capable transport systems. The 100G solution in core or long-haul networks is now spreading to metro or regional networks.
But 100G is a blunt and costly instrument, and what really is needed is a cloud-optimized metro that uses integrated packet transport and is has packet-optimized WDM (wavelength-division multiplexing), As Dave Brown, Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent details in a recent podcast.
Click to play: What’s Next for Metro Transport Networks
In a recent TechZine posting, Retool Metro Transport Networks with Packet-Optimized WDM, Brown elaborated even more saying, “Service providers are realizing that current networks are not efficiently filling the 100G pipes with the mix of packet traffic.”He added that, “This issue will only exacerbate in the more complex and dynamic nature of metro networks.”
Brown is advocating that a more integrated approach is needed when it comes to metro networks.
“The time is now to retool the metro network with a more holistic approach – a solution that is not only scalable but agile and efficient,” he wrote. “We already see service providers making this choice, and moving toward a packet-optimized WDM approach.”
Specifically, operators need to leverage a packet-optimized WDM platform that is optimized for scalability with metro-tuned, programmable 100G and 200G options and with multilayer, multiservice switching, according to Brown. They also should use an integrated layer 2 over WDM solution for maximum efficiency and performance, and one that is MEF Carrier Ethernet (CE) 2.0 certified for all MEF service types (including E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree and E-Access).
Further, the right solution will leverage a proven OS across the optical and Ethernet/IP/MPLS platforms for the benefits of a common service, operational and management model.
Alone, 100G is not enough to meet the metro network demand. But with a smarter network, the change in metro traffic patterns doesn’t need to be a nightmare for operators.
]]>Türk Telekom, Turkey’s leading telecom service provider, broke the record with help from Alcatel-Lucent Agile Optical Networking technology, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent post. The record, which is the equivalent of transferring 250 high definition movies across the cable per second, relied on Alcatel-Lucent’s 100G optical technology. The transmission took place between Ankara and Istanbul on the Türk Telekom dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) backbone network in the summer of 2013.
The record was broken through the design and use of the most advanced 100G DWDM network using the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS-32) and 1626 Light Manager solutions.
“We were looking to extend our fiber broadband infrastructure to all parts of Turkey and, at the same time, exploit the advantages offered by the relevant technologies to the maximum extent in our network backbone” said Memet Atalay, vice president of operations for Türk Telekom.
This presented an opportunity to showcase Alcatel-Lucent’s 100G technology and show the type of speeds it can facilitate, which led to the record.
“Designed to meet the need for greater bandwidth posed by high-resolution video services, web access, and cloud services, our 100G technology stands out for its environmentally friendly features while offering extraordinary performance, flexibility, and reliability on existing optical transmission networks,” said Cenk Kivilcim, country senior officer of the Turkey-Azerbaijan region for Alcatel-Lucent.
Confirming the record with Guinness World Records meant showing the speeds on a pair of fiber optic connections and having it evaluated through a meticulous process carried out by the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC), an internationally recognized test center. It wascertified by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
“Türk Telekom was so impressed with the capacity enabled by the trial, that, supported by us, they applied for the Guinness World Records title,” noted Arm El Leithy, vice-president of Middle-East, Africa and Turkey for Alcatel-Lucent. “We are very pleased to have been a part of this world record, as it showcases our expertise and leadership in Agile Optical Networking.”
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