ONIntro
ONIntro
Introduction
A. Yayımlı
İTÜ, Dept. Computer Engineering
2016
Optical Networking
In the 1980s telecommunications carriers began
migrating much of the physical layer of their
intercity networks to fiberoptic cable.
Optical fiber is a lightweight cable that provides
low-loss transmission.
Its most significant benefit is its tremendous
potential capacity.
This trend gave rise to optical networks and the
field of optical networking.
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Optical Networking
An optical network is composed of the fiber-optic
cables that carry channels of light.
The cables are combined with the optical
components deployed along the fiber to process
the light.
The capabilities of an optical network are
necessarily tied to the physics of light, and the
technologies for manipulating lightstreams.
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WDM
One of the earliest technological advances was the
ability to carry multiple channels of light on a single fiber.
Each lightstream, or wavelength, is carried at a different
optical frequency and multiplexed (= combined) onto a
single fiber.
This is known as wavelength division multiplexing
(WDM).
The earliest WDM systems supported fewer than ten
wavelengths on a single fiber.
Since 2000, this number has rapidly grown to over 100
wavelengths per fiber, providing a tremendous growth in
network capacity.
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Some example fiber maps
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Examples
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Examples
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Examples
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EDFA
A key enabler of cost-effective WDM systems was the
development of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA).
Prior to the deployment of EDFAs, each wavelength on a
fiber had to be individually regenerated, at roughly 40 km
intervals.
In contrast, EDFAs, deployed at roughly 80 km intervals,
optically amplify all of the wavelengths on a fiber at once.
Early EDFA systems allowed optical signals to be
transmitted on the order of 500 km before needing to be
individually regenerated.
More recent EDFA systems allowed this distance to be
increased to 1,500–2,500 km.
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Increasing bit rate
In the mid-1990s, the maximum bit rate of a
wavelength was roughly 2.5 Gb/s.
This has since ramped up to 10, 40, 100 Gb/s.
400 Gb/s and 1Tb/s rates are likely to be
deployed in the 2015-2020 timeframe.
Increased wavelength bit rate combined with a
greater number of wavelengths per fiber has
expanded the capacity of optical networks by
several orders of magnitude over a period of 25
years.
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Optical bypass
Optical-bypass technology eliminates much of the
required electronic processing.
It allows a signal to remain in the optical domain for
all, or much, of its path from source to destination.
Achieving optical bypass required advancements in
areas such as optical amplification, optical
switching, transmission formats, and techniques to
mitigate optical impairments.
Commercialization of optical bypass technology
began in the mid-to-late 1990s.
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Tiers
It is useful to segment the network into multiple
geographic tiers.
Key differentiators among the tiers:
the number of customers served
the required capacity, and
the geographic extent.
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Tiers
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Access Tier
At the edge of the network, closest to the end
users, is the access tier.
It distributes/collects traffic to/from the customers of
the network.
Access network generally serves tens to hundreds of
customers.
It span a few kilometers.
It can be subdivided into:
business access and residential access, or
metro access and rural access.
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Metro Tier
The metro-core tier is responsible for
aggregating the traffic from the access networks.
Typically interconnects a number of tele-
communications central offices or cable distribution
head-end offices.
A metro-core network aggregates the traffic of
thousands of customers.
It spans tens to hundreds of kilometers.
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Core/Backbone Tier
Moving up the hierarchy, multiple metro-core
networks are interconnected via regional networks.
A regional network carries the portion of the traffic that
spans multiple metro-core areas, and is shared among
hundreds of thousands of customers
A geographic extent of several hundred to a thousand
kilometers.
Interregional traffic is carried by the backbone
network.
Backbone networks may be shared among millions of
customers.
They typically span thousands of kilometers.
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Three layered
architectural model.
The optical layer is
based on
wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM)
technology with
configurable optical
switches.
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The solid lines represent the physical fiber-optic links and the dotted
lines represent the paths of two routed wavelengths.
The two wavelength paths create a virtual topology where the solid
lines represent virtual links, or lightpaths.
The virtual topology can be modified by establishing different
wavelength paths.
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TE vs. NE vs. NP
Traffic Engineering:
“Put the traffic where the bandwidth is”
Network Engineering:
“Put the bandwidth where the traffic is”
Network Planning:
“Put the bandwidth where the traffic is
forecasted to be”
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Traffic Engineering
Essentially a routing problem
packets, packet flows, circuits
on-line dynamic problem, quick decision making
Metric: blocking probability
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Network Engineering
As a network continues its operation, traffic
builds up, certain parts of the network becomes
congested.
Additional capacity is needed to relieve the
congestion.
Decision-making time is on the order of
weeks/months.
Capacities may be asymmetric.
Metric: exhaustion probability
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Network Planning
Planning network from scratch
Decision-making timescale: years
Given a set of traffic demands between nodes
design the network for minimum cost:
Determine how much capacity to put on each link
Route the traffic
Topology may or may not be given.
Traffic forecasts are usually not “one snapshot”
event.
A network planner may be given an annual traffic
forecast over an N-year period.
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What is an Optical Network?
Transmission: optical
Switching:
optical or electronic or hybrid
circuit or packet or burst
Not necessarily all optical
Most promising approach today:
Connect any two routers with a direct bandwidth pipe
of any capacity
Increase or decrease or delete the capacity on
demand
Dynamically control the topology connecting routers
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Advantages of Optics
Fantastic for transmission
Optical amplifier can simultaneously amplify all of the
signals on all channels (~160) on a single fiber
Huge bandwidth: 50 Tbps on single fiber
Compare it to electronic data rates of few Gbps
Low signal attenuation
Low signal distortion
Low power requirement
Low cost
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Optics-Electronics Mismatch
50 Tbps vs. 100 Gbps
How to exploit the fiber’s huge capacity?
Introduce concurrency among multiple users
Wavelength or frequency division multiplexing: WDM
Time-division multiplexing (TDM) and code-division multiplexing
(CDM) are futuristic technologies today. They are relatively less
attractive since they both require much higher bit rate than
electronic speed.
WDM is the favorite multiplexing technology for optical
networks:
End-user equipment needs to operate at the bitrate of the WDM
channel.
Channel bitrate can be chosen arbitrarily: peak electronic
processing speed.
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WDM
The optical transmission spectrum is carved up
into a number of non-overlapping wavelength
bands.
Each wavelength supports a single
communication channel operating at any
electronic speed.
Challenge is to design and develop appropriate
network architectures, protocols, and algorithms.
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Research on Optical WDM
Networks
Considerable activity over the past years.
Check out the magazines and transactions: IEEE
Communications, IEEE Network, ToN, JSAC, JLT,
Optical Networking Magazine, Jrn. Photonic
Networks, …
Overwhelming attendance at the WDM centered
conferences and workshops.
ICC, Globecom, Infocom, OFC, ECOC, ONDM, …
Many experimental prototypes are being
deployed and tested by telecom providers in US,
Europe and Japan.
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Point to Point WDM Systems
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Wavelength Add/Drop Multiplexers
The WADM can be inserted on a physical fiber
link.
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Passive Star
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Passive Router
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