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Satisfying Bandwidth Demands

By Principal Analyst, Service Provider Infrastructure


Vendors used OFC this week to announce and demonstrate their latest solutions designed to satisfy the next wave of increased bandwidth demands. With the industry rapidly moving beyond the capabilities of 10G and into main stream deployment of 100G services, it is clear that switching capacities and port densities on existing packet optical transport platforms will be stressed. For example, until recently, metro-focused packet optical platforms, capable of delivering 2 - 4 Tbps of capacity, provided adequate performance to satisfy even the largest requirements. Given the latest traffic projections, service providers will soon need to reset the performance bar upward to cope with metro traffic growth as well as for all layers of the network.

Several vendor announcements this week caught our attention, and help prepare the industry to address the next round of bandwidth growth. Two of these announcements, Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 2 and Infinera’s Infinite Capacity Engine, set the stage to handle massive increases in 100G and beyond services. Both announcements represent the next generation of large scale photonic integration technology designed to move the capacity needle to the next level.

Nokia announced its new Photonic Service Engine version 2 (PSE-2), developed at Nokia Bell Labs, to expand the capacity of its 1830 PSS optical transport portfolio. The new chipset doubles wavelength capacities and wavelengths per fiber to efficiently deliver single-carrier 100G transport services for 400G, long haul 200G and ultra-long haul 100G all at reduced power levels. The PSE-2 enables the latest member of the 1830 PSS portfolio, the PSS-24x, to deliver up to 48 terabits per rack.

Infinera’s Infinite Capacity Engine, its next generation FlexCoherent Processor and 4th generation Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC), delivers super-channel capacity up to 2.4 Tbps with programmable spans up to 12km. The solution supports all modulation schemes, includes in-flight integrated encryption (AES-256) supporting bulk and per service models and is highly power efficient. Operators can pre-deploy service-ready bandwidth which can be provisioned, on-demand, in 100 Gbps increments via SDN. These capabilities enable each bandwidth slice to be configured for color, modulation and direction, which promises to dramatically reduce operational rigidity and complexity found in optical networks. Infinera will use the new sub-system in its Intelligent Transport portfolio.

Continued investment in specialized optical components and photonic subsystems, coupled with the maturing capabilities promised by SDN and NFV, provide the basis to enable service providers to deliver on end user expectations for infinite bandwidth on-demand anywhere.
 
Glen Hunt
Principal Analyst, Service Provider Infrastructure
Current Analysis

Glen provides analysis of technology, products, and vendor initiatives for carrier infrastructure equipment. Specifically, focusing on IP routers, optical transport, data center interconnection, mobile backhaul and software defined networking.



 

Posted: 23 March 2016 by Principal Analyst, Service Provider Infrastructure | with 0 comments

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The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC)  or its sponsors.