OIF Demo integrates control, data planes

Telecommunications Americas, June, 2004 by Jim Barthold

The increasing importance and presence of Ethernet transport in international networks is the foundation of an interoperability Super-Demo by the OIF (Optical Internet-working Forum) that will be conducted simultaneously in China, Germany, Italy, Japan, and, of course, at SUPERCOMM in Chicago. Host companies working with the demo will include leading telecom carriers such as AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI R&D Laboratories, NTT, Telecom Italia and Verizon.

"The emphasis is on optical switching, transmission and client equipment. Specifically, it's based on the implementation agreements from the OIF along with the specs. from the ITU that cover the Ethernet adaptation," said Jim Jones, chairman of the OIF Architecture and Signaling Working Group.

The demonstration's international characteristics and participants will show carriers and service providers how the control and data planes can be integrated as Ethernet becomes a more integral transport mechanism for data and voice.

"We've previously demonstrated the control plane, which is the UNI and the E-NNI that allows end-to-end optical connections," said Jones. "What's being added is the Ethernet adaptation so that client equipment that has Ethernet interfaces can efficiently use the transport network."

While it might seem that in today's telecom atmosphere interoperability--even among disparate international elements--should be a given, that's not the case, said Jones, pointing to the volatility of mixing transports with international standards and multiple vendors' product specifications. The demonstration, he said, will highlight this volatility and show how interoperable testing works out the kinks.

"There can be a number of surprises when you actually get into the lab," he said. This will be the first time that various ITU specs for Ethernet are brought together to network with multiple vendors in the international space, he added.

"If you look at each of them individually, they are not as complex as they are when they have to interoperate," he explained. "That becomes an even bigger challenge when you have multiple vendors, because each of these specs may have different options that can be enabled or disabled or configured."

And sometimes, he suggested, "the spec isn't absolutely clear. Sometimes those things are discovered in interoperability trials."

Suppliers and carrier companies will demonstrate interoperability testing of Ethernet over SONET/SDH services including GFP (Generic Framing Procedure), VCAT (virtual concatenation) and LCAS (link capacity adjustment scheme). The dynamic optical networking interoperability testing will be based on OIF implementation agreements for UNI (user-to-network interface) and E-NNI (external network-to-network interface) and will include testing of both the control and data planes based on the ITU's requirements for automatically switched optical networks.

"It will be dynamic to some extent," said Jones. "There will be connections set up and torn down on command from the SUPERCOMM site; dynamic changes made during the show itself; and some offline demonstrations of what has been done prior to that."

In all, he said, it will help "open the door considerably wider for multi-vendor interop."

And, he might have added, it will be live, with all its flaws.

RELATED ARTICLE: Betting on AdvancedTCA

A new hardware platform specification called AdvancedTCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) is gaining steam with component and systems suppliers alike. The goal of the PICMG specification is to standardize the building blocks of the data, control and systems planes of system hardware. Analyst group RHK predicts the market for third-party building blocks will grow from next to nothing today to $3.7 billion in 2007. Learn more at the AdvancedTCA pavilion at SUPERCOMM 2004 in Chicago.