May 13, 2004 Stockholm, Sweden -- Lumentis AB, supplier of metro and regional optical transport solutions, and Acreo, a Swedish research institute in optics and microelectronics, have completed the first phase of GMPLS interoperability testing. The comprehensive testing took place during April, and the equipment will be moved into Acreo's national network test bed in Sweden for demonstration of new broadband services.
The testing covered the Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) suite of control plane protocols, including dynamic signaling and routing. Lumentis demonstrated the GMPLS peer-to-peer model on its optical platform together with equipment from Juniper Networks, the first router vendor to ship a production-ready GMPLS solution. The interoperability test was able to validate routing using OSPF-TE with extensions for GMPLS and signaling using RSVP-TE with extensions. Explicit GMPLS label switched paths (LSP) were dynamically set up from the Juniper routers over the all-optical cross-connects (OXC) in the Lumentis systems. In addition, resilient network solutions using primary and secondary LSPs were tested.
"We are very pleased with the progress being demonstrated by Lumentis and Juniper Networks, asserts Dr. Gunnar Jacobsen, manager, Optical Systems and Networks Lab, Acreo. "This latest round of testing validates key elements of integrating IP and optical networks using GMPLS routing and signaling. The success of this interoperability test gives us confidence in moving GMPLS into our national network for a field trial."
IP-Optical integration is becoming increasingly important to service providers as they consider new services and increased network automation that can be supported via the extension of IP-based control and management of optical networks. The seamless integration of the IP and xWDM optical network domains facilitates the self management of the converged network consisting of both IP and optical devices and significantly reduces the operational cost of next-generation carrier networks where both legacy traffic and new services can be carried in parallel.