Routed optical networks
Mark Tinka
mark at tinka.africa
Tue May 9 06:03:00 UTC 2023
On 5/8/23 21:53, Phil Bedard wrote:
>
> I guess let’s not confuse two things. The optical network is made up
> of the photonic portion and then the transponder/muxponder portion.
> A single term like “DWDM” can be confusing since it can refer to both.
>
Indeed.
I am short-handing to mean DWDM on the line side and grey on the client
side.
> It will take a long time (maybe never) to remove the photonic
> switching part of the network.
>
There was a time when my intention was to do just that. But that was
prior to expecting to ever run links larger than 10Gbps :-).
> However, it’s always been cheap to deploy because optical vendors
> tended to subsidize that network using sales of the other portion, the
> transponders, which you buy more and more over time. Those photonic
> components are expensive.
>
It depends on the application... either you want performance, space and
power cost optimization or functional integration of previously
disparate system-level features. This will determine whether you focus
on pluggables or embeddeds, with pluggables promoting cost reduction,
while embeddeds push performance.
> On the DWDM signal portion, I’m not talking about 100ZR compared to
> 100G on a transponder or DWDM line system. 100ZR has had to deal with
> the power limitations of QSFP28 ports, which QDD/OSFP do not suffer from.
>
Right - 100ZR is short-reach (80km). It's really for the metro edge
where 400Gbps is not needed.
> There are quite a few QDD pluggables in production today capable of
> supporting 100G signals over 1000s of km or 400G near 1500km.
>
I think the more interesting QSPF-DD (or OSFP) development is OpenZR+,
which is an MSA project to standardize 400ZR+. The plan is to be able to
support 100Gbps up to 5,800km, and 400Gbps up to 480km (EDFA) or about
1,000km (EDFA + Raman). With a 4x 100Gbps mode supported on QSFP28
router ports, you can have one muxponder talking to 4x routers at
100Gbps each.
> Now that’s not what you can get out of some external transponders,
> so those will still have their place in high performance
> applications. When you move to 800G, 1.2Tbps single channel they
> also have their own distance limitations. So it really depends on the
> application and the network.
>
800Gbps and 1.2Tbps applications are really for long haul use-cases,
especially if you used 400Gbps pluggables before and run out of distance
(so less than 1,000km). They are also preferred for submarine use-cases.
I can't wait to see what happens when the CMOS gets down to 5nm and 3nm.
Mark.
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