Routed optical networks

Thu May 4 17:32:20 UTC 2023

It’s not necessarily metro specific although the metro networks could lend themselves to overall optimizations.

The adoption of ZR/ZR+ IPoWDM currently somewhat corresponds with your adoption of 400G since today they require a QDD port.   There are 100G QDD ports but that’s not all that popular yet.   Of course there is work to do something similar in QSFP28 if the power can be reduced to what is supported by an existing QSFP28 port in most devices.   In larger networks with higher speed requirements and moving to 400G with QDD, using the DCO optics for connecting routers is kind of a no-brainer vs. a traditional muxponder.   Whether that’s over a ROADM based optical network or not, especially at metro/regional distances.

There are very large deployments of IPoDWDM over passive DWDM or dark fiber for access and aggregation networks where the aggregate required bandwidth doesn’t exceed the capabilities of those optics.  It’s been done at 10G for many years.  With the advent of pluggable EDFA amplifiers, you can even build links up to 120km* (perfect dark fiber)  carrying tens of terabits of traffic without any additional active optical equipment.

It’s my personal opinion we aren’t to the days yet of where we can simply build an all packet network with no photonic switching that carries all services, but eventually (random # of years) it gets there for many networks.  There are also always going to be high performance applications for transponders where pluggable optics aren’t a good fit.

Carrying high speed private line/wavelength type services as well is a different topic than interconnecting IP devices.

Thanks,
Phil

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+bedard.phil=gmail.com at nanog.org> on behalf of Etienne-Victor Depasquale via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
Date: Monday, May 1, 2023 at 2:30 PM
To: NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Routed optical networks
Hello folks,

Simple question: does "routed optical networks" have a clear meaning in the metro area context, or not?

Put differently: does it call to mind a well-defined stack of technologies in the control and data planes of metro-area networks?

I'm asking because I'm having some thoughts about the clarity of this term, in the process of carrying out a qualitative survey of the results of the metro-area networks survey.

Cheers,

Etienne

--
Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
Assistant Lecturer
Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
University of Malta
Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale
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