SDN controllers - (Open Networking Part 3-2)

Hello Friends, thank you for providing feedback on my earlier posts related to Open Networking. This post is a part of series of posts related to Open networking with a special focus on optical SDN architectures. As promised in my earlier post let's understand more about other SDN controller architecture available from other vendors in the industry.

In my previous post, we discussed the transport controller solution provided by Fujitsu, Infinera, and Sedona. This week let's review the controller solution available from Juniper, NetFlex LightRiver, and Cisco. 

Juniper's Northstar controller based on PCE architecture defined in RFC 5440, supports source packet routing in networks(SPRING) to manage and optimize network resources and data plane.

   

Netflix from LightRiver is a multi-vendor Optical domain SDN controller supporting the integration of devices provided by many industry-leading vendors like Adva, Ciena, Cisco, Fujitsu, Infinera, Nokia.

Cisco provides the commercial distribution of OpenDaylight platform providing solution most relevant use case line Device and Topology management, Traffic engineering, and Network Function virtualization. In the Reference section, I have provided a link to an interesting Open controller document providing details of various use cases and other domain controllers like WAE, Cable controller, and Cisco NFVI, worth read. 

Additionally, Cisco DEVNET provides a rich community for learning and sandbox environments as well for those trying to learn coding and testing apps. Again worth a try, it is FREE!

With this post, I would complete my research on various controller architectures available (or being worked upon) in the industry. Next week we will deep dive into one of the architectures and understand various use cases and components common to most of these architectures. 

One important aspect that I was not able to complete in this section was the adoption of these architectures to solve real-world use cases. If you know this information it will be of great value to me if you can leave it as comments.

" If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary "

- Jim Rohn 

References:

Cisco Open SDN Controller

Juniper NorthStar controller

Netflex Optical SDN controller

My previous post- OPENROADM

My previous post - Open Optical Networking

Beyond 800G

Good morning, a detour this week from the original topic of this series Open networking( only for this week). 

I am amazed by the progress of the optical industry from 100G/wavelength deployed in the year 2011 to 400G/wavelength deployed in the year 2017 and now with 800G lambda/wavelength being deployed starting the year 2020 (Some of the recent 800G deployment and announcements available in the reference section).

So whats' NEXT?? 1.2T /wavelength(a.k.a lambda) 

There are two primary knobs that helped the industry to reach the 800G per wavelength capacity. First the use of coherent technology with higher modulation schemes and second increasing the baud rate(symbol/sec). However, physics does now allow us to play with these tools infinitely without paying a price :). 

With higher modulation formats while we gain higher spectral efficiency, the reach of such link is limited(compared to another design with the same baud rate and lower modulation format). Read this document for further details.

On the other hand with a higher baud rate, long-distance(long haul/submarine) can be realized but the overall spectral width(which is proportional to the baud rate) required to transmit the channel is higher, thus limiting the total number of channels that can be packed on a fiber. 

The industry is able to manage both these controls well and with improvement in FEC, DSP, mix modulation formats, and the real-world requirements, enabled combinations for the service providers to deal with the mind-boggling increase in bandwidth requirements. 

1.2T(1200 Gb/s) will not be much different. Acacia demonstrated its 1200Gb/s module in ECOC 2019 using 64QAM modulation with a ~100GHz spectrum requirement( reach not known). 

With 800G/wavelength in production now, it will be interesting to see the early leaders, developing and enabling network migration to 1.2T/wavelength.

Another interesting trend to watch: ill 1.2T/wavelength steal the thunder from 800G/wavelength (40GE vs 100GE)? 

Surprisingly I was not able to find many public announcements for the 1.2T/wavelength available in the public domain. If you know more please leave a comment and I will update the post. 

Have a good day 

Reference: 

Ciena 800G Announcements

Huawei and Turkcell 800G Trial

Infinera 800G Announcements

Acacia 1.2T single channel

Infinera Higher Baud rates

"Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day"

- Jim Rohn