Optical Internetworking Forum Begins Work on Virtual Network Services

The Optical Internetworking Forum will begin work on a specification for Virtual Network Services (VNS) that could become a main driver for deployment of SDN in Transport Networks. The aim of VNS is to slice the network and present the underlying network to the customer or application as a Virtual Network (VN).

“This work on VNS is timely as the network struggles to define SDN services for Transport Networks,” said Vishnu Shukla, of Verizon and the OIF president.  “The OIF has a history of recognizing gaps in technology through its member interaction between carriers and vendors.”

The OIF also announced approval of two implementation agreements addressing OTNv3 and ENNI (External Network-Network Interface), and completed a 100G Carrier Requirements document.

The OIF OTNv3 Amendment adds support for the latest ITU-T G.709 recommendation. The amendment’s signaling extensions to the OIF UNI and E-NNI and routingextensions to the E-NNI interfaces add support for the OTU and ODU containers, including flexible and re-sizeable ODUflex containers, 2.5G and 1.25G tributary slot granularities, single-stage and multi-stage multiplexing and hitless ODUflex resizing. This enables support for dynamically adjustable client services, e.g. Ethernet, over OTN networks.

The OIF E-NNI Recovery amendments add support for signaling protection and restoration recovery mechanisms to the OIF E-NNI. The amendment’s signaling and routing extensions enable the establishment of multiple associated connections to provide a recovery mechanism to achieve a requested service level. Supported recovery mechanisms include 1+1 protection, soft and hard rerouting and shared-mesh restoration which may be combined to provide even higher service levels.

In addition, the Forum also announced that work on specifications for the CEI-56G project is proceeding rapidly with an interim meeting called to discuss details and advance the effort. CEI-56G will define the next generation of serial electrical interfaces that will enable 400 Gbps roadmaps.

Carrier Working Group members completed a requirements document for “Intermediate Reach 100G DWDM for Metro Type Applications”. The document was created to support ongoing work in the OIF’s Physical Link Layer Working Group to produce requirements and application scenarios related to low cost, reduced power and high-density approach for next-gen 100G transmission.

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