FEATURE SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING
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SDN controller. Te control layer talks to the switch through open Web 2.0 APIs that have been created using a lightweight, modern soſtware construct that abstracts the underlying transport network to make it easily programmable.
Initial applications Other optical vendors have said they expect transport SDN to be deployed on the edges of the network first, because that is where the most variability in traffic patterns is usually found. As you move into the core, statistical multiplexing helps to smooth everything out, but this doesn’t happen to the same extent on the edges of the network. For example, at Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona earlier this month, Coriant carried out a demonstration in partnership with Nokia,
One thing you can’t really virtualise is the production of photons
where they used Nokia’s network traffic analytics in combination with Coriant’s Transcend SDN soſtware to optimise the bandwidth allocation in a mobile backhaul network. What Pacnet and Infinera have announced
Pacnet’s network connects 19 data
centres in 15 cities in 10 countries across the Asia-Pacific region
typically they would need a vendor proprietary management system and make the changes there. He added: ‘I could show you wonderful
things that we can do with our management system in terms of point-and-click- provisioning of services, making them re-routable, making them protected, there’s all sort of things you can do, but you’re doing it with our management system. What SDN allows you to do is, instead of a proprietary management system, we’re now allowing our switches to be controlled by a SDN controller.’ If you take this thought to its logical conclusion, this means a service provider no longer needs a propriety network management system to run the network any more, they could actually do it with the appropriate applications on an SDN controller. Te new OTS soſtware, which is available
now, is the piece that enables Infinera’s DTN-X optical switches to be managed by a third-party
26 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 7 • Spring 2015
with the PEN 3.0 service is the polar opposite – soſtware control of bandwidth on an ultra-long-haul core submarine network spanning the Pacific. Bennett is not surprised by this observation. ‘Tis won’t be the first conversation we’ve had where you say to me “Infinera’s giving me a completely opposite story to everybody else”. Honestly it’s for the same reasons that this always happens – we’ve got a capability in our hardware that other people don’t have.’ He is referring to Infinera’s 500G super-
channel system, which is enabled by photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Te PICs replace multiple discrete components with a single pair of indium phosphide chips, meaning that every Infinera line card ships with spare capacity already installed. ‘With most other people’s architectures, in
fact every other architecture I can think of at the moment, their approach is a pay-as-you- grow model,’ said Bennett. ‘What happens is that, to turn up capacity between A and B, you go out and you buy a 100G transponder, an
Pacnet
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