JANET Aurora A Dark Fibre Facility for Photonics and Optical Networks and Systems Research

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JANET AuroraA Dark Fibre Facility for Photonics
and Optical Networks and Systems Research

• CEF 2009
• 14th May

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Topics

• Mostly JANET Aurora
• Dark Fibre Facility
• JANET
• Lightpath Service
• 40G production IP
• Recent 100Gb/s trials
• ALL enabled by access to Dark Fibre

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Aurora
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What is JANET Aurora ?

• A dark fibre facility to support research on
  Photonics and Optical Networks and systems
• Not a production network
• Not a production testbed
• A flexible platform to support University Research

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Background

• Early discussions in 2001-2002
• 2003-2004 UKLight case made funding secured
• Circuit oriented network (Lightpaths)
• Implemented with TDM technology (SDH)
• A small dark-fibre facility
• Initially lower priority, then many additional
  funding committee delays
• Eventually procured in 2005, and first phase in
  service Dec 2007 3 universities
• Second phase completing in May 2009 2 more
  universities
• Total about 4M over about 3.5 years
• Funded with five sites until May 2011 (2 years
  operating)
• FROM HEFCE via JISC

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Why dark fibre ?

• Photonics Work at this level needs a dedicated
  fibre network
• Researchers can put their own equipment on the
  fibres
• Possibly equipment they have built themselves
• Investigate new devices components
• Lasers, Amplifiers, Modulators
• All the elements to make communication systems
  work
• New transmission techniques
• Higher capacity (more bits/s) on each wavelength
• More wavelengths
• Avoid disrupting other users
• This kind of work cant possible be done on
  shared fibres (eg JANET !)

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What have we procured ?

• Access to a pair of fibres linking Research
  groups at five Universities
• Access to intermediate locations for installing
  equipment
• Researchers will put Optical Amplifiers and
  Dispersion Compensators in these locations
• possibly ROADMS/WSS in future

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JANET AuroraDark Fibre Testbed supporting
Photonics research
305km
860km Total
Aston University
Bury St Edmunds
72km
University of Cambridge
Ipswich
University of Essex
50km
54km
Interconnection with JANET Services - National
International Lightpaths Broader community access
to Dark Fibre facility
57km
55km
Telehouse
Chelmsford
Enfield
30km
28km
Intermediate equipmentco-location point
205km
UCL
University / JANET access point
University of Southampton
Fibre spans
In construction
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Deployment

• Virgin Media (ntlTelewest Business) are
  approaching the end of the deployment
• Much iteration on testing and accepting fibres to
  meet the specifications
• Access policy agreed
• Accompanied access no extra cost (within
  reason)
• Three days notice (faster in emergency)

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Fibre transmission properties

• Loss
• Signal gets weaker as it travels along the fibre
  (the light gets dimmer)
• Dispersion
• Signal tends to spread out or distort as it
  travels along the fibre (several kinds of
  dispersion)
• More critical as capacity goes up, particularly
  from 10Gbits/ to 40Gbit/s

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Target Fibre parameters

• Maximum span loss 17dB
• Standard splice losses apply (lt0.2 dB)
• All spans fully spliced (no connectors except
  terminal ODFs)
• Chromatic dispersion lt 1100ps/nm
• Per span
• except longest links gt 65km where 1200ps/nm is
  the limit
• Maximum PMD 2.5ps
• University to University NOT per span
• Aimed for spans of lt50km
• in practice there are several between 60 and
  70km, and one at 73km

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Looking for reflections
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Dispersion (PMD) Tests
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What will JANET Aurorabe used for ?
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Photonics Examples

• Phosphorus Project EU FP6 funding
• End-to-end lightpath provisioning
• Co-scheduling with GRID resources
• Photonics Device research
• Install bespoke optical equipment on fibres
  (lasers/modulators/compensators)
• Ultra-fast photonics research
• Optical Burst Switching
• Flow triggered switched lightpaths (genuine
  lambdas/wavelengths) 160Gb/s trials undertaken
• OTDM see following slides

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Field Trial of WDM-OTDM Transmultiplexing
employing Photonic Switch Fabric-based
Buffer-less Bit-interleaved Data Grooming and
All-Optical Regeneration
G. Zarris1, F. Parmigiani2, E. Hugues-Salas1, R.
Weerasuriya3, D. Hillerkuss4, N. Amaya Gonzalez1,
M. Spyropoulou5, P. Vorreau4, R. Morais6, S.K.
Ibrahim3, D. Klonidis5, P. Petropoulos2, A.D.
Ellis3, P. Monteiro6, A. Tzanakaki5, D.
Richardson2, I. Tomkos5, R. Bonk4, W. Freude4, J.
Leuthold4, and D. Simeonidou1 1 Photonic
Networks Laboratory, University of Essex, U.K. 2
Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of
Southampton, U.K. 3 Photonic Systems Group,
Department of Physics and Tyndall National
Institute, University College Cork, Ireland 4
Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics,
University of Karlsruhe, Germany 5 Athens
Information Technology Centre, Greece 6 Nokia
Siemens Networks Portugal S.A., Portugal
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Field Trial
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First Experiment
B
D
1542 nm
C
1542 nm
129 Gb/s Tx
A
ADORE
NODE 1
Chelmsford 110km
E
1556 nm
1556 nm
1554 nm
CRU
HNLF
ADORE
OTDM-to-WDM
NODE 2
WDM-to-OTDM
F
EAM
l1
l2
l2
MEMS
l1
l2
l2
l3
42.7 Gb/s Tx
G
RX
Ipswich 80km
42.7 Gb/s Tx
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Operating Model

• JANET(UK) is the managing agent
• Operates the facility
• Advisory Group
• University representatives from Photonics
  Research departments
• JANET(UK)

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Future collaboration ?

• Facilities like Aurora wont scale to many sites
• Too costly, complex, inflexible
• Project scheduling issues policy etc.
• Tension between a service testbed, and a
  flexible research facility
• In some cases it may be useful to interconnect
  similar facilities using standard circuits
  (lightpaths)
• Phosphorus
• Possibly using dedicated wave in future

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JANET
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STFC - RAL (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
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JANET Lightpath Service

• Dedicated Network capacity for projects
• Point-to-point circuits
• Typically about 1Gb/s
• About 30 paths configured
• Across about 15 projects
• New infrastructure
• Reviewing provision reinstatement with projects
  US providers

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Initial Lightpath Core Topology
EoMPLS Fine-grained capacity provisioning

• Uses Existing Circuits
• Supports existing lightpaths

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All Core links except AB and AC are 40Gb/s
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100 Gb/s trial

• JANET(UK) with Nortel and Verizon
• About two weeks ago
• Very Successful promising
• Loaned equipment (Nortel) Verizon co-ordinated
  the work
• Separate fibre
• JANET will need 100Gb/s on the core in 2010
• Already at 17Gb/s over 40G link

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Conclude

• All this activity is enabled by access to Dark
  Fibres
• JANET IP and Lightpath services are evolving
  steadliy
• JANET Aurora will help to support the photonics
  work
• Taking lab based work to wide area trials
• Foundation technologies and techniques for future
  commercial systems
• If good work is done over the next two years
• can make a case to keep the network
• possibly even extend it

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Further Information

• www.ja.net/services/aurora

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End
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Spare slides
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What is dark fibre ?

• Standard circuits from telcos
• They have fibre networks with their own equipment
  and they sell circuits
• BT, Verizon
• Dark Fibre
• Just buy (lease) access to an optical fibre from
  a telco (in the past they would not sell this
  BT still wont !)
• Put your own equipment on it to transmit data

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Why dark fibre ?

• Photonics Work at this level needs a dedicated
  fibre network
• Researchers can put their own equipment on the
  fibres
• Possibly equipment they have built themselves
• Investigate new devices components
• Lasers, Amplifiers, Modulators
• All the elements to make communication systems
  work
• New transmission techniques
• Higher capacity (more bits/s) on each wavelength
• More wavelengths
• Avoid disrupting other users
• This kind of work cant generally be done safely
  on shared fibres (eg JANET !)

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One cause of Dispersion
Core Shape
Ideal
In practice slightly Oval
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Fibre transmission properties
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Futures
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Whats in the offing ?

• National Grid Service NGS3
• Proposed Lightpath links for central resources
• European Grid Infrastructure - EGI
• Co-ordination between national initiatives
• Not necessarily lightpaths
• PRACE EU Supercomputing facility
• May require Lightpaths
• LOFAR
• Low Frequency Radio Astronomy
• First UK station will be at STFC Chilbolton

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Congestion

• Road networks and computer networks have
  similarities
• Mix of traffic types (Lightweight and
  Heavyweight)
• Can get congested (hopefully not JANET !)

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Reels of Optical Fibre Cable
Typically 2km lengths up to 96 fibres per cable
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Grid systems connections on demand

• If Networks can provide connections on demand
• How can the operating systems and applications
  use them ?
• Scheduling resource requests
• Having network, computing, storage and
  visualisation systems all available at the same
  time
• Hard problem !
• Linking these concepts at the Optical networking
  level

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Where is all this going ?
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Electronics Transistors to CPUs
First Transistor in lab December 1947 (Shockley,
Bardeen, Brattain)
60 Years development
Intel Dual Core Itanium2 2006 3,400,000,000
transistors
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Optical equivalents

• Photonic components
• Combinations of optical and electronic elements
• Optical logic circuits Optical Computers
• All-optical routers optical packet switching

Graphics from Bristol University Optics
Photonics Research Group
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What is dark fibre ?

• Standard circuits from telcos
• They have fibre networks with their own equipment
  and they sell circuits
• BT, Verizon
• Dark Fibre
• Just buy (lease) access to an optical fibre from
  a telco (in the past they would not sell this
  BT still wont !)
• Put your own equipment on it to transmit data

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Investigating higher transmission rates

• JANET Backbone (and most others) built with
  10Gbit/s links
• We have one at 40Gbit/s more next year
• Next steps move much higher
• 100Gbit/s Ethernet
• 160Gbit/s SDH
• More Wavelengths per fibre
• JANET backbone can go to about 90
• Regional Arcs can go to about 40
• Developments may take these much higher
• 100s, possibly 1000s of wavelengths per fibre

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Intel Quad Core Chip
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Intel TeraFlop Research Chip
1,000,000,000,000,000 multiplications per second
! One Thousand Million Million
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Futuristic stuff..(smiley)

• 1948 Transistor took over from valve
• how many people know about or remember valves
  (radios TVs)
• Some Guitar amps and exotic hi-fi these days
• 60 years later we have chips with 10 million or
  more working together PC CPU chips

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