SERENATE WP3 Equipment Study

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SERENATE WP3Equipment Study
Valentino Cavalli, TERENAslides from Roberto
Sabatino, DANTE
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WP3 (Equipment) Mission

• A study of into the availability and
  characteristics of equipment for next-generation
  networks
• More specifically, to look at developments of
  routing, switching and transmission equipment
  over the next 2-5 years
• Efforts concentrated on addressing
• higher capacities (i.e. 40Gbps)
• optical technology for switching and transmission
• developments in network management and the
  control plane
• impact on network architectures

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Work Plan

• Bi-lateral meetings with 11 equipment vendors
  and 2 university research labs during November
  and December 2002
• Equipment vendors
• Alcatel, Calient, Ciena, Cisco, Corvis, Juniper,
  Lucent, Nortel, Photonex, Tellium, Wavium
• e.g. cross-section of players from the well
  established to the newly started-up
• University research labs
• University of Essex (Prof Mike OMahoney)
• University of Ghent (Prof Piet Demeester)
• Attempted to contact a number of other vendors
  who either did not respond or declined to take
  part

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Questionnaire

• A confidential questionnaire was developed to
• set the context of the bi-lateral meetings for
  the vendors (questionnaire was sent to them in
  advance)
• provide some guidance for discussion during the
  meetings
• Questionnaire addressed the following broad
  topics
• 40Gbps capabilities (drivers technical
  difficulties)
• Device scalability
• New control plane paradigms
• switching and transmission developments

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The Team

• DANTE (leader)
• TERENA
• NREN Consultants from
• CESNET
• PSNC
• HEANet

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Routing developments

• Scalable to terabits, in multi-chassis platforms
• require experts for installation?
• 40Gbps backplane support and slot capability
  exists today
• 40Gbps interface capability planned, but not
  yet available
• SONET/SDH framing
• coloured interfaces ?
• Maybe but proprietary solutions

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Router functionality

• Differentiated Classes of Service
• multicast
• ipv6
• MPLS-based VPNs
• G-MPLS
• following standards, expected improved
  interoperability
• interdomain functionality still questionable

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Switching developments

• Optical Cross Connects (OXC)
• Essentially digital cross connects with optical
  interfaces
• Also called O-E-O switches
• Photonic Cross Connects (PXC)
• Devices that work entirely in the optical domain
• Also called O-O-O switches

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OXCs

• Scale to hundreds of Gbps, using advanced ASICs
• bandwidth grooming performed with proprietary
  techniques (not interoperable!)
• GMPLS developments implementations still have
  proprietary features, although some
  interoperability demonstrated
• Colour DWDM interfaces some proprietary examples
• Will only work with same vendors transmission
  equipment

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PXCs

• All the rage a few years ago
• Now all but a few vendors have either moth-balled
  their products or gone out of business
• Can save on O-E-O conversions hence
• footprint
• power consumption
• cost
• Bit rate, protocol wavelength independence
• Scale up to tens of Tbps switching capacity
• Earliest envisaged use (of smaller products) as
  remotely manageable optical patch panel

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PXC difficulties

• re-routing of wavelengths leads to optical
  channels in different route length amplification
  and dispersion control difficult
• QoS hard to control
• Need external TDM devices for BW grooming
• interoperability

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Transmission equipment

• Capabilities of current state-of-the-art DWDM
  transmission equipment far exceeds BW needs for
  the next few years
• Little vendor interoperability amongst
  transmission components nor is this likely to
  happen
• nature of systems is proprietary and analogue
• only standards are ITU grid wavelength specs
• may be possible to mix match for low capability
  systems (CWDM, lower bit rates e.g. 2.5Gbps)
• Every DWDM link is bespoke
• No off the shelf deployments

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Reach

• Very complex equation. Depends on
• fibre type (G.652, G655.)
• capacity of each wavelength
• number of wavelengths
• amplification technology used
• transmission technology used
• FEC

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Reach with Nothing In Line (NIL)

• Using pre and post amplification
• up to 280km at 2.5Gbps (Cesnet experience) using
  RAMAN
• using cheaper equipment (1GE, EDFA amplifier)
  result was 189km
• 350km demonstrated

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LH and ULH systems

• LH (to 1,500km) and ULH (to 4,000 km) require
  amplification at each span (40-100km)
• larger spans if less wavelengths (200km) at
  10Gbps
• RAMAN
• FEC
• 40Gbps can reach 1,000km with 80km spans
• RAMAN
• dispersion compensation at receiver
• PMD mitigators (depending on fibre)

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Some conclusions

• 40Gbps first in LH? Some say metro-area..
• depends where economics work in its favour
• common view is that main driver will be router
  interface cards
• still more than 4x cost of 10Gbps
• 80Gbps, 160Gbps technically possible, but in
  labs. (600Gbps has been demonstrated)

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Network architectures

• New set of requirements for research networks
• traditional users at large
• relatively limited number of users with
  requirements for limited coverage but very high
  capacity
• accessibility of cheap wavelengths in some
  parts of Europe
• developments of transmission technology
• in some cases NRENS can do better without
  carriers

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Network Options

• Traditional IP (layer-3) only
• mixed layer-2 layer-3, with OXCs (or PXCs)
• Owned fibre network
• a mix of all

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Network Management and control

• Different network architecture means NRENS will
  manage new network elements
• Use traditional telco-style management systems as
  well as SNMP-based ones
• Integration of two needs work!
• G-MPLS has potential for integrated control, but
  interoperability and implementations conformant
  to standards not there yet