CurrentCast - Optimizing Total Network Bandwidth & Progress of IP/Optical Integration

Continued rapid growth in network traffic and subscriber density is driving vendors and service providers to take the next steps in optimizing all available bandwidth in their networks. Several factors are driving this growth, including the rise of massive video traffic, continued expansion of the mobile ecosystem (being driven by data and video), and the necessary support for increased enterprise traffic (driven by cloud and data center services). As industry predictions show, the increase in growth will continue for the next three to five years, and it points to a collision between the IP domain, where dynamic bandwidth schemes to handle unpredictable traffic patterns have been prevalent, and the circuit-oriented optical domain, where the need is growing to handle larger amounts of unpredictable packet traffic not only to satisfy bandwidth demands, but to do so at the lowest cost per bit.

The physical form of IP/optical integration has been around since 2005, when Cisco first implemented IP over DWDM (IPoDWDM) for its Carrier Routing System (CRS). However, mobile broadband services and the deployment of video content caches away from the core of the network have resulted in an increase in the unpredictability of traffic patterns that will only increase as cloud services begin exchanging data between distributed processors, memory, storage, and users/peripherals and as data centers are deployed more widely across the network. The industry is beginning to address this increase in traffic unpredictability by developing a more active form of IP/optical integration, in which routers and switches interact more closely with the optical devices to establish or reconfigure paths dynamically for the wavelengths that interconnect them.

As vendors develop strategy for delivering IP/optical integration, they are not only addressing an interoperable control plane for the switches/routers and the optical network, but they are also proposing methods for networking above the optical layer (that is, sub-lambda networking) to utilize wavelengths across the network. Multiple vendors have recently promoted product strategies for delivering “active” IP/optical integration, as evidenced by an analysis of IP/optical integration in the following reports:

• Huawei Demonstrated the Benefits of Its SingleBackbone, but is the Industry Ready?, May 27, 2010 | Client Access
• ADVA Investment by Juniper – Only Potential Joint Sales and Marketing for Now, July 7, 2011 | Client Access
• Alcatel-Lucent Announces Its First CBT Sale to Mostelecom; What Makes It CBT?, August 5, 2010 | Client Access
• Ericsson Unveils Products and Solutions, Clarifies Its 4th Generation of IP Networking Vision, February 11, 2011 | Client Access
• ADVA Optical Networking Introduces a Compelling 100G Optical Cloud; Will the Tier 1 Operators Notice?, March 3, 2011 | Client Access
• Juniper Unveils Converged Super Core Architecture – Is It a Switch, a Transport Box or Both?, March 3, 2011 | Client Access
• NSN Throws 100G Hat into Ring with Test of hiT 7300 System Interconnecting Juniper T1600 Core Routers, March 7, 2011 | Client Access
• Cisco’s CRS-3 Positioned to Penetrate Projected $4.3 Billion Packet Transport Market, April 12, 2011 | Client Access
• The Need for Greater IP/Optical Integration: Why Now?, May 2, 2011 | Client Access
• ADVA and Juniper Demonstrate Automated Setup of Router Interconnection Driven by Router Request, May 13, 2011 | Client Access

As vendors and operators strive to come to consensus on IP/optical integration, they are seeking answers to numerous questions, such as: How do you channelize a wavelength? If the network is evolving to all-packet, why not base IP/optical integration on packet switching? If OTN switching is really less expensive than packet switching, which IP/optical integration strategy do service providers prefer? Which IP/optical integration strategy will prevail?

What follows is a conversation between Ron Westfall (Research Director, Service Provider Infrastructure), Glen Hunt (Principal Analyst, Transport and Routing Infrastructure), and Rick Talbot (Senior Analyst, Transport and Routing Infrastructure) exploring these issues.

| Client access - Report in Transport and Routing Infrastructure |