The OIF announced progress in its Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration 2009 – Enabling Broadband On-Demand Services, which is currently underway in the following Carrier labs since March 2009: China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Orange Labs -France Telecom Group, KDDI R&D Labs, NTT, Telecom Italia and Verizon. Leading optical networking equipment vendors are making control plane technology and Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) services a top priority during the testing.
In particular, the companies are testing the interoperability of EVPL services in the control and data planes over diverse transport technologies. Carriers are testing, in varying configurations, EVPL over the following transport types:
- Next generation TDM and wavelength transport using OTN
- Legacy TDM transport using SONET/SDH
- Packet transport technologies using PBB-TE and MPLS-based transport (Testing is based on ITU-T T-MPLS Recommendations that are being updated to align with the Joint IETF/ITU-T work on MPLS-TP)
The OIF’s UNI 2.0 supports Ethernet (EPL and EVPL) services, so the client can signal for EVPL service without regard to the technology layer used in the carrier network. Participants are also demonstrating multi-domain end-to-end service restoration utilizing E-NNI between vendor domains. The E-NNI is a key enabler, not only for interconnecting vendor control planes and technologies, but for value-added features such as Ethernet service delivery and end-end restoration.
The participating vendors are coming together from across the globe including Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena Corporation, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Marben Products, NEC Corporation of America, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Sycamore Networks, Tellabs and ZTE.
Interoperability testing of heterogeneous network equipment includes multi-service optical network platforms, optical transport switches, ROADMs, NG SONET/SDH ADMs, digital and optical cross connects, carrier Ethernet multi-service switches, and carrier packet transport products.
The OIF’s 2009 Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration – Enabling Broadband On-Demand Services begins with intra-lab testing among each of the seven participating Carrier sites. The test sites are linked via virtual or real E-NNI connections, forming a global test network topology. The event enables testing with more vendor implementations, allowing carriers to access additional network resources beyond the boundaries of their existing networks on a global scale.
