At this year's NYSERNet conference, Niall Robinson discussed the latest breakthroughs and field trials on the path to optical network automation and disaggregation.

1. Disaggregation, automation and autonomy
in optical networking
Niall Robinson
VP, global business development
Disaggregation

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Charting the path to network automation and
disaggregation: Carrier SDN survey analysis
Heavy Reading, Carrier SDN Survey Analysis, Feb. 2018
http://img.lightreading.com/heavyreading/hr20180207_esum.pdf

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Disaggregation – vertical direction
Proprietary hardware
Proprietary HW abstraction
Proprietary software
Proprietary interfaces
• Vendor lock-in
• Complexity
• Compromises
Closed element
White box hardware
Open HW abstraction
• Open and simple
• Best in breed
• Extensible
Open APIs
ONIE installation capability
Open software
From
old style
To
new style
Disaggregated element

4. © 2018 ADVA Optical Networking. All rights reserved.44
Disaggregation – vertical direction
Proprietary hardware
Proprietary HW abstraction
Proprietary software
Proprietary interfaces
• Vendor lock-in
• Complexity
• Compromises
Closed element
From
old style
To
new style
Voyager – an industry first
Facebook – donated design to TIP
Cumulus – the open network operating system
Celestica – the hardware provider
Broadcom – the ASIC chip provider
Acacia – the optics provider
ADVA – the management/solution vendor

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A bit of history …
2015 20172011
2013 2016 2018
• Open Compute
Project initiated
• Focus on servers
• OCP expands to
cover switches
• Early discussions on
white box network
hardware
• Telecom Infra Project
initiated
• First project
specifications /
design contributed
• Multiple TIP projects
driving specifications
• Expect first
deployments of TIP
hardware

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Driving open source, open architecture across whole IT infrastructure
OCP and TIP
Similarities and differences
Server Switch Storage Access Backhaul Core
Data center Telco network

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Voyager – packet optical solution
Announced at TIP Summit 2016
Redundant removable fans and power supplies
2.0Tb/s I/O capacity
• 12x QSFP28 open client ports (10G, 40G, 100G service
support)
• 4x 100G/150G/200G configurable coherent network ports
Tomahawk switch
• Layer 2 / Layer 3 LINUX NOS
• BGP, EVPN, VxLAN, …
Voyager is Facebook’s open optical packet transport
box
The hardware design has been submitted to TIP, the
Telecom Infra Project making this available to all
Voyager is a 1RU pizza box packet-optical solution
• It has Layer 2 forwarding engine and Layer 3 routing
capabilities
ADVA will supply Voyager hardware and software –
either:
• As a standalone entity for integration into disaggregated
networks
• Integrated with ADVA open optical layer and
management system
• Both options will be integrated into ADVA commercial
and service offerings
Voyager A disaggregation transport solution
procured through ADVA

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Cumulus Linux
Fully featured switching and routing capabilities
• IPv4/v6 routing via FRRouting
• OSPFv2, OSPFv3, BGPv4/v6
• Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) and VRF route
Leaking
• BGP, OSPF
• Equal-cost multi-path (ECMP)
• Bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD)
• Protocol-independent multicast (PIM, PIM-SM, PIM-
SSM)
• Segment routing
• Policy-based routing
Layer 2 features
• Ethernet bridging: VLANs / VLAN trunks (IEEE
802.1q)
• LACP (IEEE 802.3ad), unicast/broadcast storm
control, LLDP
• Spanning tree
• STP (IEEE 802.1d), RSTP (IEEE 802.1w), PVRST,
PVST
• MLAG (multi-chassis link aggregation)
• IGMPv2/v3 / MLDv1/v2 snooping
• Virtual router redundancy
Layer 3 features
• EVPN
• VXLAN support
• VXLAN routing – symmetric
and asymmetric
Network virtualization
• Syslog
• SNMP monitoring
• Buffer monitoring
• Simplified support via cl-
support output
Network operations
• Docker on Cumulus Linux
• OpenStack Neutron ML2 and
Cumulus Linux
• RDMA over converged Ethernet
(RoCE)
Other solutions

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Disaggregation – horizontal directionAggregated
Fully aggregated: Entire transport network acts as a single managed system
End-to-end system
API
Transponder TransponderTerminal ILA ROADM Terminal
Fully disaggregated: Everything is a separate network element
Partly disaggregated: Transponder is one element, open line system (OLS) is second
Degrees
Open line system
Disaggregated
APIAPI API
APIAPIAPI API API API
IETF TEAS TE topology
ONF transport-API
AT&T OpenROADM
Google OpenConfig
ONF core model
ONF core model

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Challenges
• Optical network consists of many inhomogeneous network elements
• Amplifier, WSS, wavelength blocker, …
• ROADMs can have very different levels of flexibility and internal constraints
• Colorless, directionless, contentionless add drop, …
• Especially in cost-sensitive metro network environments constrained technologies
are often used (filterless / fixed filter ROADMs, non-colorless, …)
• Data models must be abstract to allow future technology advances
• Number of data models should be limited to allow interoperability testing

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Disaggregation – operator concepts and vision
[U. Hölzle,
plenary talk,
OFC 2017 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9zEiGyvJ-A [M. Filer et al., JOCN,, vol. 8, no. 7, 2016]
https://0201.nccdn.net/1_2/000/000/098/a85/Open-ROADM-whitepaper-v1-0.pdf

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ONF ODTN (01/2018-12/2018)
https://wiki.onosproject.org/display/ODTN/ODTN
12
OLS Controller
WSS TRN
OpenConfig
Open Line System (OLS)
OpenConfig
OpenConfi
gMUX WSSAMP MUXTRN
ONOS
Without OLS Controller
WSS TRN
OpenConfig
Open Line System (OLS)
OpenConfig OpenConfi
gMUX WSSAMP MUXTRN
ONOS
With OLS Controller
TAPI? OpenConfig? Else?
TAPI
Has
topology?
TAPI
Short Term Feasible Architecture
System Architecture

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MetroHaul software architecture
https://metro-haul.eu
• Filterless metro network architecture
• Hierarchical SDN control
• ONF transport API for open line system via SDN DC
• OpenConfig (direct SBI or via agent) for transponders

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SENDATE multivendor optical SDN trial (09/2018)
Open disaggregated SDN control architecture
• Multi-vendor trial including network orchestration layer,
control and management layer and infrastructure layer
• Layered approach based on ONF transport API 2.0
with extensions for optical performance planning
Network orchestration layer components include:
• Transport orchestrator (highstreet technologies)
• Planning application (VPIphotonics)
(Bundled in transport orchestrator)
Control and management layer:
• SDN domain controllers (ADVA and Coriant)
Infrastructure layer:
• ROADMs and transponders (ADVA and Coriant)
• Transparent OMS back-to-back ROADM interconnect
• Alien wavelength interconnection passing both vendors’ optical
domains

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Rearchitected network control … towards autonomy
Packets
Legacy network
management
OSS/BSS
Vendor API
Infrastructure appliances
Network operating system
Multi-technology SDN domain controller
Service lifecycle management, multi-domain
orchestration, intelligent operation
TelemetryOpen device API
Open network API
Machine learning,
artificial intelligence
White boxes
Optical
Network elements

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AI business value expectations (suppliers)
Network
optimization
Fraud detection
and security
Personalization
Predicting
congestion
ChatbotsSituation-aware
assuranceCall center
Natural language
machine control
Source: AI – the time is now; TM Forum, Dec 2017

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Reasoning based on observational data can be understood and verified
With big data analytics to actionable insights
Observational data, knowledge base
• Closest match, nearest neighbor,
heuristics
• Considers policies

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AI algorithm as black box with hidden layers makes verification much more difficult
Deep learningTraining
Problem to solve
…
…
Deep learning
neural network
“Instinctive control, cognitive
networking”: decoupling of data
base from output
Observational data, knowledge base

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Automation
Autonomous
operation
Simplicity
Open programmability,
hierarchical abstraction,
telemetry streaming
Verifiability
From rule-based analytics to
deep learning with trusted data
Security
Protecting any NFVI resource,
trustworthy network data
It starts with making the network “autonomable”
Extending comfort zone while moving to automation
Manual
operation

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Bill Gates: “The first
rule of any technology
used in a business is that
automation applied to an
efficient operation will
magnify the efficiency. The
second is that automation
applied to an inefficient
operation will magnify
the inefficiency.”
First step to automation: Make operations efficient
First rule for implementing automation

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Automated service activation based on standard components
Automated service provisioning with secure ZTP
Automated configuration
1. Device connects to bootstrap server and authenticates itself and
the bootstrap server
2. Device uploads the boot-image and configuration scripts and
verifies integrity and authenticity
3. Device installs and executes boot image and scripts
Service provider (owner)
network management
Bootstrapping server

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Prediction of OSNR with ~0.04dB mean accuracy
AI/ML example: capacity optimization
MAE 0.039 dB
Max error (+) +0.57 dB
Max error (-) -0.57 dB
Split entire dataset
Build ML model using
train/validate
Get test data, and remove
true OSNR values
Apply ML model (get
predicted OSNR values)
Compare true OSNR vs.
predicted OSNR
o Neural networks
o 9 input features, 1 output feature (OSNR)
o 2 hidden layers (120x100 neurons)
o ReLu activation function

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Improving availability and faster repair cycles by predicting device outages
AI/ML example: predictive maintenance
Colored lines
detected by ML
(Jan 6th)
Precise
prediction
verified
9/JAN.
16/JAN.

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Open SDN network control
Making the move to autonomous networking
ZTP automated provisioning
Intelligent maintenance
Intelligent planning
Intelligent security
… towards problem-specific “narrow” autonomy
Gainingconfidence
Intelligent …….

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NYSERNET disaggregation field trial
Supporting system and network element disaggregation
Voyager over ADVA OLS directly
connected to Ciena OLS as alien wave
• ADVA 9ROADM-RS client port to Ciena
CMD filter connectivity
Voyager/ADVA FSP3000 QuadFlex interop
• QuadFlex acting as OTU4 OEO regen
• Currently with two cards, but it also works
on a single card and works at 200G
• Also shows QuadFlex over Ciena as an alien
wave
Voyager and QuadFlex over Cisco OLS as
alien waves
Voyager
Voyager

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Summary
1st examples of disaggregated networking elements entering the market
Partial disaggregation and OLS with per-device data monitoring allows a visibility down
to the device level but simplifies operation of the network
Recent demonstrations have proven that partial disaggregation is a working approach for
metro networks and data center connectivity
• Full disaggregation will slow down technological progress and result in more complex (and cost-
intensive) network operation
High number of evolving data models delay implementation and testing and limit
interoperability
• Industry (including operators) should decide on one common data model
Autonomic networking is now on the horizon

27. Thank you
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nrobinson@advaoptical.com
Niall Robinson
Vice President
Global Business Development
Phone: +1 972 759 1262
Fax: +1 972 759 1201
Mobile: +1 978 933 1081
nrobinson@advaoptical.com
ADVA Optical Networking NA. Inc.
2301 N. Greenville Avenue
Suite 300
Richardson, TX 75082
USA
www.advaoptical.com