Panel I: Towards Layer 1-2-3 Convergence

Wednesday, March 7

Moderator:

Mark Lum is Co-Founder and Market Lead at Layer123, a new venture knowledge exchange company. His expertise is founded in Optical, Carrier Ethernet, Mobile, Metro, FTTx and Storage networks and services, with experience spanning WDM, OTN, SDH/SONET, ATM, MPLS and Ethernet technologies. Mark studied Natural and Electrical Sciences at Cambridge University and was awarded his MSc in Telecommunication Systems while working in the Harlow R&D labs of ITT-STL, developing the very first multi-Gigabit optical systems. He has a broad industry experience, having worked at Tektronix as market development manager, Nortel Networks as portfolio manager, RHK as market research director and as an independent consulting analyst. Mark has also taken an active role in global standardisation, having led Tektronix' program at ITU and ETSI, contributing as technical editor for several standards and as ITU-T Rapporteur. With many papers published on carrier network evolution, he is a well-known and frequently-requested speaker and chair at industry conferences.

Panel Description:

Service Providers have been travelling the Yellow Brick Road towards Convergence for at least the past decade, if not far longer. The rise of packets, increasing broadband traffic and the explosion of mobile services has not made the techno-economic environment any simpler, and operating costs must be reduced.

Many operators desire to flatten and simplify their hierarchical network architectures, and are carefully examining how fundamental network functions such as aggregation, grooming, restoration and protection are handled. Classically, all traffic is carried by the transport equipment, with the advantage that these functions support all traffic types. In the case of protection, parallel mechanisms at higher layers like IP may duplicate functions or interfere with the service restoration process. Thus, switching at the lowest layer should provide the optimal solution – a classical paradigm that OTN continues.

With new Ethernet transport and MPLS transport capabilities standardised and implemented, are these fundamental network functions now interchangeable between optical and packet transport layers? Can the network be optimised to make a particular layer redundant? What are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so? What is the end game – or target architecture – for carriers? What will the impact on strategic network investment and planning be over the next decade?

This panel will present and debate different perspectives arising from service requirements, architectures, geographies, regulatory regimes and historical investments – and discuss those differences. What does the future path hold? Can we yet glimpse the Emerald City of Convergence?

Speakers:

Network Convergence: Some Practical Considerations
Bob Feuerstein, Principal Architect Transmission, BT Innovate & Design, USA
The god box was first discussed back in the late 1990s; one box that could do it all for a service provider. That turned out to be premature. But now with the new generation of equipment perhaps we are going to really see one. Is it a good box? The devil is in the details as usual. Combining the management systems for three layers, with much new functionality, and making it usable, testable, and affordable is the test carriers will apply before deploying it. The first applications will be niche applications in the network. Once a positive operational experience and attractive financials have been demonstrated, widespread adoption will follow. The issues of regulatory restrictions, competition, training staff, effective design tools, lifecycles of existing technologies, evolving customer requirements, traffic growth and its variability in time and location, all factor into how quickly these new technologies will be deployed.

Bob Feuerstein is the Principal Architect for Transmission and Synchronization Systems for BT. He received his PhD in Electrophysics from Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY. He then joined the NSF Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center at the University of Colorado. There he researched optical computing, optical communications and helped build the world’s first stored program fiber optic computer. He taught classes in optoelectronics and optical communications. He worked in congress for one year after receiving an appointment as the IEEE Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow (1998). He worked at Level 3 Communications as a Senior Architect supporting Level 3’s customers and internal optical network design requirements. He joined BT in 2008. He has spoken at dozens of technical and corporate meetings and authored 20+ publications on optical communications, network architecture and design. And he enjoys relaxing on his sailboat, Lightwaves, on Lake Champlain during summer holidays.


Drivers for Convergence of Layers 1-2-3
Frank Rühl, Emerging Technology Manager Fixed Network Technologies, Innovation and Chief Technology Office at Telstra, Australia
In recent years we have seen a transition from purpose built service-specific networks that were tightly vertically integrated to NGN networks that support reuse and flexibility of horizontal network layers. This has given much needed flexibility and increased speed to market to deliver new services. At the same time network traffic is growing rapidly driven especially by video based traffic types. In order to build sustainable networks businesses supporting the new services and growing traffic, operators must build smarter networks. Varied degrees of convergence of layers 1, 2 and 3 provide ways of delivering more cost effective architectures that can meet this challenge. There is also an intrinsic technological convergence of layers with a range of new emerging technologies. This paper will discuss the drivers for the convergence of network layers and technologies supporting this convergence.

Frank Rühl is the Emerging Technology Manager for Fixed Network Technologies in the Innovation and Chief Technology Office of Telstra. He is responsible for developing strategies for the future evolution of the Telstra fixed network and the underlying technologies, including Transport, Aggregation, Broadband Access, IP Core Networks and Network Control. He holds a PhD in optical communications from the Australian National University and has been working in optical communications research and its application to telecommunications networks for nearly 30 years. He has been instrumental in the introduction and evolution of optical transport networks in Telstra’s network and various major technology evolution studies. He has been an Invited speaker at OFC, COIN and NFOEC international conferences.

Technical Aspects for Layer-converged Platform - NTT Labs Viewpoints
Masahito Tomizawa, Group Leader, Senior Research Engineer, NTT Network Innovation, Japan
This presentation overviews layer-converged platform of Packet-Optical Transport Systems (P-OTS) from the viewpoint of a carrier's R&D. Starting from a motivation, next-generation network architecture, protocol-choices, convergence-level, and required functions are discussed. Some example of an efficient bandwidth usage by inter-layer grooming will be introduced. Carrier’s hope of clear standards and the market evolution will be addressed.

Masahito Tomizawa is a senior research engineer, group leader, at NTT Network Innovation Labs. He received M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1992 and 2000,
respectively. From 2003 to 2004, he was a visiting scientist at MIT. He has been engaged in high-speed optical transmission systems and their deployments, as well as international standardization in ITU-T, and also international carrier-to-carrier collaboration for several years.

How Do We Get There
Glenn Wellbrock, Director of Backbone Network Architecture, Verizon Business, USA
Network convergence appears achievable today if, and only if, service convergence can be achieved. Router suppliers are developing impressive optical systems and OTN suppliers already have optical systems. The issue is neither appears to have scalable platforms today that can support all IP and TDM service requirements. This presentation will focus on network implications as we aggressively migrate toward all-packet services while still supporting higher rate TDM services.

Glenn Wellbrock is the Director of Optical Transport Network Architecture and Design at Verizon, where he is responsible for the development of new technologies for both the metro and long haul transport infrastructure.  Previous positions include running the advanced technology lab, establishing evaluation criteria, and setting engineering guidelines for all backbone transport equipment as well as various positions within network operations.  In addition to his 20+ years at Verizon (1984-2001 & 2004-present), Glenn was responsible for Product Architecture within the USA focused optical networks group at Marconi and Product Planning at Qplus Networks with a specific focus on developing alternative modulation techniques.