Huawei releases industry's first commercial OXC+OTN cluster mesh backbone network solution

[Nice, France, June 19, 2017] At Next Generation Optical Networking (NGON) 2017, Huawei officially released its mesh backbone network solution, featuring all-optical switching, full mesh, and one-hop service transmission. The new solution is designed to enable operators to deliver ultra-high bandwidth, meeting the demands of enterprises, internet content providers (ICPs) and cloud services.

The solution uses the industry's first commercial Optical Cross-Connect and Optical Transport Network (OXC+OTN) cluster devices to re-construct Data Center (DC) centric backbone networks and provide wavelength/sub-wavelength connections between DCs for one-hop transmission, ensuring low latency and ultra-large bandwidth between any two DCs.

At the event, Huawei demonstrated innovative dynamic grooming of optical wavelengths and cross-connections through OXC, as well as OTN cluster, high-integration and multi-functional service boards.

With the rapid development of Internet and cloud services, traffic between DCs is expected to grow by 50% over the next few years. Inter-DC traffic will become the main type of traffic on transport backbone networks. In this new environment operators need to evolve their backbone networks which have been designed for traditional telecom services. They now need DC-centric networks that enable mesh interconnectivity between network nodes and one-hop service transmission. This shortens the network path for services to reduce latency and ensure real-time exchange of data between DCs, meeting the demands of cloud services.

Huawei’s OXC+OTN cluster mesh backbone network solution has been developed to reconstruct operators' transport backbone networks for the cloud era. The OXC+OTN cluster mesh backbone network architecture enables one-hop transmission between any two cities, minimizing the latency for DC interconnections.

Using wavelength-level switching and Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) technologies, the OXC provides 320T to 640T cross-connect capacity and supports wavelength grooming in up to 32 optical directions with power consumption of hundreds of Watts.

Additionally, the introduction of optical backplanes addresses the issues of complicated fiber connections within traditional Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADM). Optical backplanes greatly simplify fiber connections, reduce connection losses, and improve system reliability. The OTN solves the access and grooming requirements of small-granularity services that are at the sub-wavelength level. The cluster technology achieves non-blocking cross-connections between OTN subracks and provides resource pools for transmission channels, enabling continuous smooth expansion of channel resources between DCs.

According to Don Frey, OVUM's principle analyst in one of his latest report:

"One of the challenges created by all-optical solutions, including current ROADM technology, is the complexity of fiber connections. The optical backplane (of OXC) simplifies fiber connections within the system, which reduces the possibility of fiber errors. Digital optical monitoring will enable advanced control and wavelength management, promising a more elegant fiber management approach. The OTN cluster allows carriers to offer more flexible services to Cloud CSPs and enterprises. With the Huawei Agile Controller-Transport, operators can provision OTN bandwidths in a shorter timeframe, meeting demand for bandwidths from ICPs, enterprises, and 5G transport."

Huawei optical network solutions have consistently led the rapid development of the ultra broadband industry, including Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH), point-to-point Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM), OTN, and now OXC+OTN clustering. Huawei remains committed to providing operators with highly efficient and economical backbone network solutions. The mesh backbone network solution will help operators build future-oriented CloudOptiX transport networks and embrace the all-cloud era.