The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) will use next month’s OFC/NFOEC conference to showcase interoperability of Ethernet transport over Optical Transport Networks (OTN). The demonstration will complement another demonstration at the show of interfaces for 100-Gbps designs (see “OIF members plan 100G interface interoperability demo”).
The “OIF Interoperability 2012 – Enabling High-Speed Dynamic Services” demonstration will focus on both data- and control-plane technology. Twelve OIF member companies are participating directly in the demonstration, which is already underway. Four carriers -- Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom/Orange, KDDI, and Verizon – have hosted equipment in their labs. Vendors who have provided the equipment include ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, EXFO, Huawei, Marben Products, Metaswitch, and Tellabs. In addition to these 12 participants, AT&T, China Telecom, and NTT have provided consulting services but could not host equipment, said Jim Jones of Alcatel Lucent and the OIF’s president and Networking Interoperability Working Group chair.
The demonstration aims to showcase the effectiveness of updates to the existing OIF ENN-I 2.0 and UNI 2.0 Implementation Agreements (particularly the former), with extensions for both multi-layer and OTN. Within the labs, 1-Gbps and 10-Gbps Ethernet streams are injected into OTN equipment, which maps these flows into the appropriate ODU wrappers. Transport of the traffic within the labs will demonstrate data plane interoperability. The control plane kicks in when flows between labs are set up and executed.
“Carriers around the world are migrating their networks from SONET/SDH to Ethernet and OTN. This combination enables operators to scale their networks for the rapid growth and volume of packet traffic while also accommodating the continued existence of TDM,” said Sterling Perrin, industry analyst for Heavy Reading. “The OIF has an important role to play in helping converge these two different but complementary technologies.”