SDN FOR OPTICAL TRANSPORT NETWORK SERVICES

By Kenny Ade: 30th July 2016 @ 24.00Hrs
 

 There have been so much discussions and so much marketing with Software-Defined Network.
It is important in this article to enumerate the problems that we are trying to solve.
SDN is really interesting for four major issues in the network. The first is efficiency. Right now when carriers operate different transport and packet network, they tend to experience strands between these two layers which result in excess cost.ie ( transport and packet bandwidth builds excess cost into carrier networks).
The second is cost by using better multi-layer planning and provisioning. The objective is perhaps, some of the higher cost equipment specifically layer 3 routers as well as O/E/O convergence can be reduced in sending traffics to ROADMS or expressing it pass router. The third is flexibility as this is most important benefit of SDN and that is really taking the network asset and making them more responsive not just to your own internal operation but ideally to a direct customer control and finally the fourth problem is potentially to solve disaggregation. This will allow service provider to reduce dependence on a single vendor within a domain and if we take this to its ultimate conclusion, you could dissagregate network right down to specific points.

The key take here is that SDN is really about automation and not central planning. It about using automation tools to extract more value from the network.
One of the catalyst that is really triggering service providers to look at deploying SDN is the transition of packet capability moving down to transport layer.
As we go from now till 2017, there is a significant increase in amount of traffic that service provider are expecting to handle using packet optical equipment. There is a decline in the use of layer 3 dedicated routers so optical equipment will play a larger role in providing packet switching and aggregation by 2016. Routers are not going away. Packet optical is still secondary to routing layer. The decrease in the deployment of this technology is really catalyzing SDN in the transport layer.
Optimally, a management approach that balances the use of one layer versus the other is needed.
Bottom-Line, SDN is really just an enhancement of traditional routing models.
At the end of last year, Infinera really surpass report on the Carrier SDN market by estimating direct spending on software market size including NFV orchestration and controllers. This year estimate is pretty small around 200 million dollars and forecast  a growth of about US$1.2 Billion Market by 2018.
Also worth mentioning, how service providers are changing operations in order to use SDN.
In respect to flexibility and automation in our discussions with service providers, there is a rise of dynamic cloud services driving the need of routers to increase speed of innovation and support faster service creation, they need to move faster transforming into a DevOps model and deployment while lowering costs.
The DevOps new model is a model that breaks down silos between development, QA and Operations to rapidly release new services and service enhancements as new features become available.
The traditional Telco Model is slow, rigid with siloed product development cycle as different teams specify and develop software, while another do software testing , integration and test before deployment and this could take up to 18-24 months to deploy. DevOps IT Model is a scenario where you combine the development team, the Q/A team and Agile & collaborate and quickly release features as they become available. What this allows the carrier team to do is move much more quickly in terms of service creation and get your new services out of the door and much more customize to what the users need.
There are basically two drivers for network renovation with SDN technology. The first driver is information and communication technology (ICT) full-service operation. what this means is that the boundary between ICT and CT has been blurred in the recent years, we have seen the presence of voice and data and on top of that we have seen new applications driven by cloud computing, Smart education, Big Data, Smart Home and M2M and the recent 2K/4K video etc.
Basically, this new applications have really push for the need of application-aware on transport network services providing different OS and TOE upon application.
The second driver for network renovation is the user behavior change faithful to consumer or transport network services.
In the past, the large bandwidth will establish static connectivity asking a major consumer transport network. This is changing as user application now require much more that end-to-end agile services based on the premise of pay for usage (PoU). In a nutshell, the transport network have to provide faster and smart services that is needed for user experience.
We have been able to identify what is happening on the transport networks. In this article, we focus on the Transport SDN problem statement, implementation and solutions as experienced by various service provider deployments and carriers' . We discussed the recommended approach in providing solutions to this panacea

In our next article , we will discuss why is these changes are happening and the fundamental changing market conditions...