[c-nsp] MPLS-TP on CPT platform vs IP/MPLS core on ASR with TE

[Phil Bedard]

On 11/26/13, 10:18 PM, "Mark Tinka" <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:

>On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:37:29 AM Gert Doering
>wrote:
> 
>> If we're talking about the same thing, I think it's a
>> great idea, and the only problem is that vendors
>> charging extra for using it (and thus, many people are
>> not using it even if their hardware could)...
>
>IPoDWDM's issues were less about its technology:
>
>	- Several DWDM vendors didn't (and hardly, today,)
>	  support alien wavelengths. Those that did
>	  supported it only for the line side, so port
>	  density was poor.
>
>	- IPoDWDM only made sense if you owned both the
>	  Transmission and IP networks. Trying to lease a
>	  colored wave from a telco doesn't generally go
>	  down well, in most parts.
>
>	- There is a real concern when IP and Optical teams
>	  need to give up their network to one another.
>	  GMPLS visibility into either domain was meant to
>	  solve this, but people are protective of their
>	  jobs.
>
>This is all coming back now under the SDN (yuck!) guise, so
>we'll see.
>
>Cisco are pushing this hard on the NCS, as are Juniper on
>the PTX (particularly after all the work Juniper and Adva
>have done in incorporating optics on their router).
>
>Mark.

My other reply somehow ended up blank.

At this point Cisco and Juniper are taking somewhat different approaches
to packet/optical. 

Juniper is still pushing to put DWDM optics on the router itself, with
their 2x100GE coherent tunable PIC out now.  The muxing portion of their
solution is yet to come but right now they partner with the Adva FSP gear
and I know they have tested it over a few different transport systems
using alien wavelengths.  Most transport systems these days work with
alien wavelengths except Infinera.

Cisco seems to have abandoned the concept of putting the optics on the
router, because the density isn't there. That's always been the rub with
colored/tunable optics when you are on the bleeding edge of bandwidth, the
density isn't there.  There was no way they could do 10x100G on the NCS6K
using tunable optics.  They are more inclined now on the NCS6K and ASR9K
to always pair the router with a transport shelf and then use
control/management plane magic to make them look like one virtual entity.
CPAK gives them the ability to use a very low cost interconnect, or they
can use traditional transponders.  It works very well for 100G since you
can have a 1:1 relationship between router egress port and line-side
wavelength, treating them as a single entity.

However that requires you buy into the "NCS" as a complete system, or at
least use a Cisco router (NCS/ASR9K) along with their transport shelf. I
know they are working to standardize the iOverlay stuff but you know how
well this stuff interoperates...

Juniper coming out with a DWDM PIC with the same density is a pretty big
feat, even if the PIC weighs like 40lbs. :)  However, they will soon
double the density on the PTX most likely and leave the DWDM solution at
half the density.  Some transceiver vendors developed a OTU4 DWDM CFP but
they haven't seen the light of day, however tunable OTU4 CFP2 has already
been shown.  So the future for Juniper and other vendors is to use tunable
pluggable transceivers instead of built-in optics.  Cisco with the CPAK
will initially be shut out of that I imagine.


Phil