Optical Networks

2E1623
Data Links and Local
Area Networks
Topics
• Optical components
ƒ WDM transmission
ƒ Add-drop multiplexing
ƒ Cross-connects
o Digital
o Optical

• SDH/SONET
ƒ Chapters 2,3

• Protection and restoration

• Control
ƒ MPLS, GMPLS

• Neighbour discovery and link management

ƒ LMP
o http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ccamp-charter.html

• Setting up connections
ƒ GMPLS
ƒ RSVP-TE

• Signalling for protection and restoration

• Optical routing and path selection

2
Optical Systems and Devices
 Optical Systems and Devices
Adding signals into Combination of
(dropping signals multiple signals
from) a path on a path

Regeneration
of optical signal
4
From B. A. Forouzan: Data Communications and Networking, 3rd ed, McGraw-Hill
 WDM—Wavelength Division Multiplexing
Multiplexer Demultiplexer

Single Multi- Single

wavelength wavelength wavelength

5
Cross-Connects
input ports output ports

1 1

2 2

. .
. .
. .
. .

N N x N switch N

• Data received on one port is

transmitted on another
6
 Opto-Electrical Switches
O/E
• ”OEO” switches
input ports
ƒ Optical input,
Electrical switch
electrical switching,
1
optical output

2 • O/E conversion can

. be complex and
.
.
expensive
N
• Signal regeneration
E/O
and wavelength
translation ”for
output ports 1 2 N
free”
.
.
.

7
 Photonic Switches

• ”OOO” switches
input ports
Optical switch • Potentially less
1 expensive

2
• No support for
. regeneration,
.
. wavenlength
N
translation, traffic
monitoring, …

1 2 N
.
.
.

output ports
8
No Switch Is Perfect

• Switching speed
ƒ Time to reconfigure the switch

• Power loss
ƒ All power switched from input to
output

• Wavelength dependency
• Polarization dependency
9
Photonic Switches Technology

• Opto-mechanical switches
ƒ Most common
ƒ Moving fiber
ƒ Moving deflector
ƒ Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)
o Semi-conductor manufacturing process

• Electro-optic switches
ƒ 2 x 2 couplers
ƒ Voltage-controlled refraction index
• Acousto-optic, thermo-optic, magneto-optic, liquid
crystal optical switches, …

10
WDM System
Added wavelengths
• Add/drop and cross-
connect configuration Transponders

Demultiplexer Multiplexer

N x N
• Transponders
ƒ Combine Transponders

receive/transmit on
different wavelengths
Dropped wavelengths
11
SONET/SDH
SONET/SDH Rates

Optical Electrical SDH Line rate Payload rate

level level equivalent (Mb/s) (Mb/s)
OC-1 STS-1 - 51.84 50.112

OC-3 STS-3 STM-1 155.52 150.336

OC-12 STS-12 STM-4 622.08 601.344

OC-48 STS-48 STM-16 2488.32 2405.376

OC-192 STS-192 STM-64 9953.28 9621.604

OC-768 STS-768 STM-256 39813.120 38486.016

OC-3072 STS-3072 STM-1024 159252.240 153944.064

14
 Virtual Tributaries

• Carry lower rate data

ƒ Partial payload
ƒ VT1.5 for DS-1 service (1.544 Mb/s), VT2
for E1 service (2.048 Mb/s), etc

15
Illustration from B. A. Forouzan: Data Communications and Networking, 3rd ed, McGraw-Hill
IP Over Fiber

IP

Packet over
Ethernet MAC ATM
SONET (PPP/HDLC)

10GBase 10GBase 1000Base

LAN PHY WAN PHY PHY

GFP

SONET/SDH

Fiber Optical Network

• Generic Framing Procedure (GFP)

• For block-coded and packet-based data streams
• “Dark fibers”, WDM and SONET/SDH

16
Protection and Restoration
Network Failures

• Failures and disasters

ƒ Technical, natural, man-made, …
• Service disruption
• Damage increases with restoration time
ƒ 50 ms and below
o Protection switching

ƒ Longer times increasingly severe damage

o Service failure
o Viiolation of SLAs (service level agreements)
o Loss of revenue
o Law suits
o …

18
Aspects of Protection and Restoration

• Robustness
ƒ Kinds of failure scenarios
ƒ Probability of failure detection and recovery
ƒ Effects during normal operation?

• Bandwidth efficiency
ƒ Network utilization

• Recovery time
ƒ Time to detect failures
ƒ Time to reorganize

19
MTBF and MTTR

• Mean Time Between Failure

• Mean Time To Repair

• “Five nines” availability

ƒ 99.999% availability

ƒ If MTBF is one year, then MTTR needs

to be less than 5.25 minutes

20
Linear Protection
N working lines
• M protection lines
• M:N protection
ƒ Protection lines in stand
by mode
ƒ No traffic

• Design questions
ƒ How large M?
ƒ When switch over to
protection lines?
o Requires communication
between sender and M protection lines
receiver

ƒ When revert back from

protection lines?

21
1+1 Unidirectional Protection
working line
• Same traffic on working
and protection line
• Receiver selects one of
the signals
ƒ Based on for example
signal quality or error
information
o LOL (Loss of light)
o BER (Bit error rate)
protection line
o OSNR (Optical Signal
to Noise Ratio)
o …

22
Ring-Based Protection

• Trade-off between number of links and

protection capabilities
ƒ A mesh has a larger degree of redundancy, but
requires more links
ƒ A tree has minimum number of links, but is sensitive
to single-link failures

23
Ring-Based Protection

• Links are organized as two rings in opposite directions

ƒ Resources allocated as 1:1 or 1+1
ƒ Two paths between each pair of nodes
o A failure switches over traffic into other direction

24
Protection vs Restoration

• Protection involves preallocated

(redundant) resources
ƒ Traffic can be switched over
immediately

• With restoration, resources are

dynamically established
ƒ Traffic is rerouted

25
Line Switching

Data path

• Transit nodes are responsible for switching over

• Span protection
ƒ To a backup channel (1+1 or M:N)
• Line restoration
ƒ To an alternatative route
o Via intermediate nodes

26
Path Switching

Data path

• Path endpoints are responsible for switching over

• Path protection
ƒ Protection paths are preallocated
• Path restoration
ƒ Protection paths are dynamically allocated
o (Routes could be precomputed, though)

27
Mesh Restoration

• A mesh has the attractive

property that it needs less
spare capacity for
restoration
ƒ 1/(D-1), where D is the
degree of the mesh
o Number of links per node
o (For a ring, D = 2)

• Path switching
ƒ Combined with end-to-end
rerouting
ƒ Restoration at granularity
of individual user
connections
ƒ Optical signalling and
rerouting

28
Protection At Different Layers

• IP routing
ƒ OSPF, BGP, IS-IS rerouting

• MPLS protection switching

• Spanning Tree Protocol

• SONET/SDH protection and

restoration

29
Control Plane
MPLS Revisited
IP
IP MPLS
ATM ATM data plane
SONET/SDH SONET/SDH
Fiber Optics Fiber Optics

• Motivations vary over time…

ƒ “Switching is better than routing”
o Cheaper, faster, …
ƒ Unified control plane
o Control ATM network from IP

31
 ATM Virtual Connections

• Identifiers have switch scope

ƒ Are only meaningful within a switch
ƒ Substituted as packets traverse through switches

32
Illustration from B. A. Forouzan: Data Communications and Networking, 3rd ed, McGraw-Hill
 ATM VCI/VPI

• Virtual connection identified by VCI/VPI

ƒ Virtual Circuit Identifier
ƒ Virtual Path Identifier

33
Illustration from B. A. Forouzan: Data Communications and Networking, 3rd ed, McGraw-Hill
What Are MPLS Labels?

• ATM VCI/VPIs

• Labels in MPLS shim header

• More general, something to denote

virtual circuits

34
Generalized MPLS (GMPLS)

• MPLS switching generalized to control different kinds of

switching
ƒ Packet switching
ƒ TDM
o Time slots
o TSI switches between time slots

ƒ Cross Connects (space division multiplexing)

o Switches between ports (fibers)

ƒ Wavelength (lambda) switching

o Switches between wavelengths

• IETF MPLS and CCAMP (Common Control and

Measurement Plane) working groups

35
GMPLS Rationale
IP
MPLS
ATM data plane IP
SONET/SDH GMPLS
Fiber Optics Fiber Optics

• Unified control plane for IP over

optical networks

36
 Generalized Label Request

LSP encoding type Switching type Payload identifier

Type of label Switch capabilities Type of payload

Packet Packet switch Virtual Tributary

SONET/SDH Time slot switch ATM

Wavelength Wavelength switch Ethernet

Fiber (port) switch

• Generalized labels is superset of MPLS labels

ƒ Wavelength, time slot, …
ƒ ATM VCI/VPI, generic MPLS labels (shim), …

37
Hierarchical LSPs

Fiber LSP
Wavelength LSP
Time slot LSP
Packet LSP

• LSPs can be organized into hierarchies

• From a (link state) routing point of view, each LSP is a link
ƒ “Link bundling” allows several LSPs with similar attributes to be
treated as a single link
38
Shared Risk Link Groups

39
Link Management Protocol

• Potentially large number of WDM links

between adjacent nodes
ƒ Parallel fibers (hundreds)
ƒ Wavelengths in each fiber (hundreds)

• Link Management Protocol

ƒ Runs on top of IP
ƒ Between adjacent nodes (neighbours)
o Check link connectivity
— “Hello” messages
o Correlate link properties
— Link identifiers, protection mechanisms, priorities, …

o Fault detection and isolation

40
GMPLS Protection and Restoration
Span Protection

• Link Protection Type (LPT) is advertised for a

link
• For 1+1 protection, no signalling is needed
ƒ Altough in practice it is useful to inform the sending
node of the failure

• M:N protection
ƒ RSVP Path refresh message
o Sent at failure
o From upstream to downstream node

ƒ Causes the LSP to be recalculated

42
Path Protection

• End-nodes switch to alternate path

• Pre-established
• Path protection bit vector
ƒ “Dedicated 1+1” bit
ƒ “Unprotected” bit

• M:N protection
ƒ Preconfigured “secondary” paths for backup
ƒ May be used by lower-priority traffic
43
Restoration

• Line restoration
ƒ Shorter delay—no need to signal back to endpoints
ƒ Transit node need information about routing
restrictions to select alternative path

• Path restoration
ƒ Longer delay
o Can be improved through precomputation of routes

ƒ May reuse resources from previous (failed) path

44
Reading Instructions

• Banerjee, A., et. al, "Generalized multiprotocol

label switching: an overview of routing and
management enhancements," IEEE
Communications Magazine, Jan 2001.
• Banerjee, A., et. al, "Generalized multiprotocol
label switching: an overview of signaling
enhancements and recovery techniques," IEEE
Communications Magazine, July 2001.
• IETF MPLS and CCAMP working groups

45