SCIENCE

HEAnet, Juniper Networks and ADVA Optical Networking have successfully demonstrated the automated setup of optical circuits between Juniper Networks routers via an ADVA Optical Networking Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network, using a common signaling protocol.

The HEAnet network consists of Juniper Networks MX Series3D Universal Edge Routers and ADVA FSP 3000 DWDM equipment. All of the equipment shares one common GMPLS control plane. Using the control plane, HEAnet was able to provision end–to-end circuits between the routers over the optical network.

The deployment of the control plane enabled the initiating router to discover, reserve and then build an optical circuit across the optical network without any user intervention beyond the original user commands on the initiating router.

Rapidly growing traffic levels in both metro and core networks are driving many network operators to deploy a new network architecture based on integrated packet-layer routers and optical-transport systems. The resulting multi-layer packet-transport solution delivers significant traffic management flexibility at each network layer, enabling improved network utilization, efficiency, performance and scalability. The integration of the packet and transport layers via a sophisticated GMPLS control plane allows the packet layer to automatically request connections across the transport layer without manual intervention. Lowering service provider OPEX, this solution also provides the ability to rapidly deliver intelligent packet services.

“This is one of the first customer GMPLS interworking tests between router and optical equipment manufacturers,” said Eoin Kenny, project leader, HEAnet. “It demonstrates how an Internet service provider can use GMPLS to provision circuits automatically across its optical network from a router in one simple step.”

“The continued rapid growth in network traffic is placing new demands on service providers around the world to implement new efficient technologies that lower network management costs while improving performance,” said Rami Rahim, senior vice president and general manager of the Ethernet and Aggregation Business Unit at Juniper Networks. “Juniper Networks was a GMPLS pioneer, and we are happy to see the growing interest and practical applications and deployments in commercial networks. GMPLS brings automation, flexibility and scalability to the service provider network, and this interoperability test demonstrates that Juniper Networks’ MX Series delivers the ease of integration necessary to simplify provisioning of the network.”

“ADVA Optical Networking has one of the most mature GMPLS-based optical control plane implementations in the industry,” said Christoph Glingener, chief technology officer of ADVA Optical Networking. “Integrating our optical control plane with the router control plane is the next step in our vision of delivering cost-effective, flexible network solutions to our customers.”