Flexible OTN / fractional 100GbE

Fri May 31 12:13:34 UTC 2019

Hi Adam,

Le 31/05/2019 à 13:48, adamv0025 at netconsultings.com a écrit :
> There's got to be vendors out there having an optical chasses with a
> combination of OTN and ethernet cards for the revenue side of the chasses
> -look at transmode/Infinera maybe?

For now the only vendor which seems to fit the bill is ECI, with their 
Apollo (and maybe Neptune) lines. But it's far more expensive and less 
dense that what StrataDNX-based OCP switch could do.

Most OTN vendors I got feedback from insists on using their "point and 
click" NMS which is a PITA in terms of productivity and forbids 
automation. It simply bares them from my wannabe-future-proof network.

> On the "looking ahead" notion, is it really impossible to build low latency
> packet-switched networks?
> As you know selling full rate L1 circuits will render your core mostly empty
> (...all that BW that could be monetized).

Packet-switching at flexible bandwidth requires buffering, while OTN 
with CBR only channels would map frames to the uplink' bitstream in 
real-time.

This allows for a 250ns port-to-port latency instead of 450ns for the 
best-of-breed, and up to 4µs for looked-up switching or routing.

Also there won't be jitter on muxponded circuits, while buffering 
eliminates deterministic latency.

And you also got right to the point : most customers will never fill 
their pipes, so there's extra gain to get from that hybrid box.

It's my understanding that some of the largest networks are already 
working on it, but it's "classified material" for now. I may as well 
postpone my deployment waiting for their R&D to be contributed to the 
OCP project, but I'd rather contribute instead.

Best regards,

-- 
Jérôme Nicolle
+33 6 19 31 27 14