At their second quarterly meeting, members of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) voted to start work on a specification for virtual network services (VNS) that could become a main driver for deployment of software-defined network (SDN) capabilities in optical transport networks.
According to the OIF, VNS is provided by slicing the network, dividing the underlying network resources, and presenting them to the customer or application as a Virtual Network (VN). The group will look at potential classification of VNS depending on the customer or application needs for varying levels of control of their VN resources.
“This work on VNS is timely as the network struggles to define SDN services for Transport Networks,” said Vishnu Shukla, of Verizon and the OIF president. “The OIF has a history of recognizing gaps in technology through its member interaction between carriers and vendors.”
OIF members also passed two implementation agreements addressing OTNv3 and ENNI (external network-network interface), and completed a 100G carrier requirements document.
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The OIF OTNv3 amendment adds support for the latest ITU-T G.709 recommendation on Optical Transport Network (OTN). The amendment’s signaling extensions to the OIF UNI and E-NNI and routing extensions to the E-NNI interfaces add support for the OTU and ODU containers, including flexible and resizeable ODUflex containers, 2.5G and 1.25G tributary slot granularities, single-stage and multi-stage multiplexing, and hitless ODUflex resizing. This enables support for dynamically adjustable client services, e.g., Ethernet, over OTN networks.
The OIF E-NNI Recovery amendment adds support for signaling protection and restoration recovery mechanisms. The amendment’s signaling and routing extensions establish multiple associated connections to provide a recovery mechanism to achieve a requested service level. Supported recovery mechanisms include 1+1 protection, soft and hard rerouting, and shared-mesh restoration that may be combined to provide even higher service levels.
Carrier Working Group members completed a requirements document for “Intermediate Reach 100G DWDM for Metro Type Applications.” The document was created to support ongoing work in the OIF’s Physical Link Layer (PLL) working group to produce requirements and application scenarios related to low cost, reduced power, and high-density approach for next-generation 100G transmission. The requirements document provides a short description of the metro network constraints and architecture evolution and summarizes the OIF Carrier Working Group requirements on such interfaces.
The OIF also announced that work on specifications for the CEI-56G project is proceeding rapidly with an interim meeting called to discuss details and advance the effort. CEI-56G will define the next generation of serial electrical interfaces that will enable 400 Gb/s roadmaps.
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