Multilayer restoration and service provisioning demonstrated in IST ONE trial

ADVA Optical Networking and its collaborators in the IST ONE project have successfully demonstrated automated multi-layer service provisioning and restoration in a network in northern Germany operated by Telefonica. The demonstration points the way towards significant opex and capex savings via close interworking between IP/MPLS and optical layers, say project participants.

IST ONE, funded by the European Union, aims to provide a mechanism to promote multilayer network management in multivendor environments. In addition to ADVA Optical Networking and Telefonica, project members include Technische Universitat Braunschweig in Germany as coordinator, Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya in Spain, and Seoul National University in Korea.

In the trial, algorithms developed by the program members enabled multilayer interaction between ADVA FSP 3000 ROADMs with the company’s RAYcontrol GMPLS control plane software and GMPLS UNI and Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers running MPLS. Jim Theodoras, senior director of technical marketing at ADVA Optical Networking, says the ROADMs acted as slaves to the edge routers for both restoration and service provision.

The demonstration highlighted several performance and cost benefits of multilayer networking, Theodoras adds. For example, service restoration by switching to a spare wavelength is well understood. However, once switched to a protection path, traffic on the network can be vulnerable to problems on that path. The IST ONE trial demonstrated the ability to rapidly provision a backup for the protection path. As a result, carriers could delay a truck roll to fix the broken path if desirable; they also could initially provision fewer restoration paths, Theodoras explains.

The resultant savings can be significant. Telefonica believes the multilayer restoration approach demonstrated in the trial can lead to a greater than 37% reduction in capital expenditures in IP/DWDM networks. Meanwhile, mean time to repair can be extended by a factor of 20 while maintaining 99.999% availability.

Rapid service turn up also can benefit carriers by decreasing time to revenue as well as enabling service providers to meet rapidly evolving customer needs. Telefonica reports that it was able to turn up new services in less than 50 seconds. Carrier sales people find this feature particularly appealing, Theodoras says.

“This trial really showcases the potential of new multi-layer networks,” said Juan Fernandez-Palacios, head of core network evolution at Telefonica I+D – Global CTO Unit, via a press release that trumpeted the trial’s results. “The level of simplicity and automation that we were able to achieve was incredible. We now have the opportunity to activate new services in seconds; previously this could take hours. What's more, we're also able to verify the drastic reduction in opex and capex that such a streamlined multi-layer setup will deliver in our network. This trial provides a clear understanding of what tomorrow's networks will look like.”

ADVA Optical Networking and Juniper plan to take the features demonstrated in the trial to market. Theodoras says that at least three customers already have deployed a form of multilayer networking using ADVA and Juniper gear, but not to the level in the trial. These customers likely will see ONE-like capabilities in future service packs. Meanwhile, the companies plan to demonstrate the advanced feature set to other prospective customers.