By Telecom Lead Team: ADVA Optical Networking,
Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, EXFO, Huawei, Marben Products, Metaswitch, and Tellabs
will conduct a global interoperability test of Ethernet services over OTN
transport, including data and control plane technology.
OIF Interoperability 2012 : Enabling High-Speed Dynamic
Services is hosted by telecom carriers such as Deutsche Telekom, France
Telecom/Orange, KDDI and Verizon.
Additional carriers consulting on the interoperability
test include AT&T, China Telecom and NTT. Demonstrations of the
interoperability tests will be on display at OFC/NFOEC on March 6-8 at the OIF
booth.
The demonstration is happening at a time when carriers
around the world are migrating their networks from SONET/SDH to Ethernet and
OTN. This combination enables operators to scale their networks for the rapid
growth and volume of packet traffic while also accommodating the continued
existence of TDM. The OIF has an important role to play in helping converge
these two different but complementary technologies.
Testing among multiple vendors in the different labs
allows carriers to evaluate the technologies firsthand and determine how to
integrate equipment into their networks. The testing is proving out updates to
the existing OIF ENN-I 2.0 and UNI 2.0 Implementation Agreements under
development, with extensions for both multi-layer and OTN. The goal of the
interoperability testing is to marry Ethernet as the predominant access and
client interconnect technology, and OTN as the dominant transport technology.
The combination of Ethernet services and OTN transport
is compelling and there is momentum in the industry to converge these
technologies,” said Jim Jones of Alcatel-Lucent and the OIF‘s
president and Networking Interoperability Working Group chair.
OIF is the first industry group to unite representatives
from data and optical networking disciplines, including many of the world’s
leading carriers, component manufacturers and system vendors.
The OIF promotes the development and deployment of
interoperable networking solutions and services through the creation of
Implementation Agreements (IAs) for optical, interconnect, network processing,
component and networking systems technologies.
The OIF supports and extends the work of standards bodies
and industry forums with the goal of promoting worldwide compatibility of
optical internetworking products.
