Short Courses
SC176 Metro Network Architectures, Today and Tomorrow
Sunday, February 24, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Joseph Berthold; Ciena Corp., USA
Level: Intermediate (Prior knowledge of topic is necessary to appreciate course material)
Course Description
This course examines the impact of new residential and business services on the architecture of metro networks, concentrating on transport aspects at the IP layer and below. Broadband services will increase the bandwidth of customer access links by two to three orders of magnitude. Since service revenue will not increase in proportion to bandwidth, new architectures must result in dramatically lower costs per unit bandwidth than today’s networks. We will analyze how new services will change the magnitude and pattern of traffic flows. We will look into traffic projections at several key points in the metro network and estimate the capacity of networking switches and transmission systems that will result from several service-mix scenarios.
We will also examine the mix of networking technologies that can be employed in the metro to yield a highly functional but economic overall network solution. We will discuss the role of IP, the dominant networking layer, in conjunction with lower network layers including Ethernet, SONET/SDH, OTN and the photonic layer. Service providers almost universally see a migration from SONET/SDH to Ethernet both for equipment interfaces and a packet transport layer. It will be important to transition from the existing infrastructure to a new infrastructure while preserving as much capital equipment as possible. We will consider which parts of the existing infrastructure can be reused and which parts are likely to become obsolete. With the anticipated dramatic growth in network capacity the photonic layer will play an important role, both in enabling capacity scaling and network reconfiguration. We will include a discussion on the application of ROADMs to metro networks.
Benefits and Learning Objectives
This course should enable you to:
- Describe the impact IPTV will have on network traffic and network equipment capacity in aggregation and core Metro networks.
- Discuss the pros and cons for the use of native Ethernet protocols in Metro networks, and describe efforts underway to create carrier class Ethernet.
- Explain how to use existing SONET/SDH transport equipment to backhaul traffic from IP DSLAMs, and deliver it to IP services equipment.
- Explain the motivation for migrating private line services to Ethernet Line and LAN services, and describe private line services that are likely not to be suitable for this migration.
- Discuss the roles of Ethernet, MPLS and IP in Metro networks.
- Explain how storage networking applications will be supported on next generation Metro networks.
- Describe network protection and restoration options in a next generation Metro network.
- Explain the benefits of optical reconfigurability in next generation Metro networks.
Intended Audience
This course is intended for network architects and planners from service providers, engineering and marketing staff from network equipment providers, technologists with an interest in the evolution of networks, industry analysts, and financial analysts.
Instructor Biography
Joseph Berthold is vice president of network architecture at CIENA. He contributes to product definition and is responsible for coordination of Ciena’s work in industry standards. Before Ciena he spent 20 years as a research manager at Bellcore and Bell Labs. He served as the Technical Committee Chair of the Optical Internetworking Forum from its formation in 1998 until 2001, and currently he serves as its president and member of the Board of Directors. He serves on the Board of ATIS. He has been a long-term contributor to OFC and was its General Program Co-chair in 2003.