SC243 Next Generation Transport Networks: The Evolution from Circuits to Packets

Sunday, March 22, 2009
4:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
Ori A. Gerstel; Cisco Systems, USA
Level: Advanced Beginner (basic understanding of topic is necessary to follow course material)

Course Description

Transport networking technologies are experiencing one of the most significant evolutionary pressures in recent history. While previous phases in the evolution of the transport layer were driven by operations considerations (SONET/SDH) and bandwidth growth (WDM), the current phase is driven by fundamental shifts in services from circuits to packets. Services like VoIP and VoD have a profound impact on how the network is architected and managed. The challenge is compounded by an order of magnitude increase in bandwidth demands from the end-user and by the large number of unknowns, both from a service type perspective and bandwidth sizing and distribution perspective. As a result, service providers and equipment vendors alike are struggling with the best long term architecture to the new transport layer and with the need for a smooth migration path form their legacy systems to that long term solution.

This course adds clarity to the new requirements for the transport layer and the different technologies that are being considered to address these requirements. The course starts with a review of new services that must be supported by the transport layer, including Metro Ethernet services, storage services and triple play services (mainly Internet/VOIP/VoD). We then proceed to discuss the current transport technologies, such as legacy IP, Ethernet, SONET/SDH and DWDM, and their drawbacks for the new offered services. Each legacy technology has been extended recently in support of the new demands. In particular, Carrier-class IP, MPLS, Metro Ethernet/PBT, Next Gen SONET/SDH and automated DWDM systems are being considered. We will clarify the innovation and capabilities that make these technologies more appropriate and how they can be combined into effective network architectures.

Benefits and Learning Objectives

This course should enable you to:

Understand transport technologies from L3 to L0: IP, MPLS, Ethernet, TDM and WDM.
Describe new enterprise services: point to point and point to multi-point Ethernet and Storage services.
Understand triple play services and their requirements: VOIP, digital video and VoD, internet access.
Understand Next Gen SONET, including: Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT), and Generalized framing procedure (GFP).
Compare MPLS, Ethernet, PBT, T-MPLS.
Describe access and core networking from a transport perspective.
Understand MPLS and Pseudowires and their role in the access and core.
Describe IP over DWDM (IPoDWDM) and competing architectures for IP core networks.

Intended Audience

This course is intended for the general OFC audience, including network planners, architects, product line managers and other professionals, as well as researchers working on electrical and optical technologies for the carrier’s transport layer.

Biography

Ori Gerstel (F’08) is a senior technical leader at Cisco. His main role is to define the architecture of IP and optical networks integration (IPoDWDM). Prior to that, he was in charge of Cisco's advanced optical technology team. He is the key inventor behind some of the advanced capabilities of Cisco’s DWDM product. Before joining Cisco in 2002, he was a senior systems architect for Nortel's photonic crossconnect. Before joining Xros/Nortel, Gerstel was the systems and software architect for the Optical Networking Group at Tellabs, where he architected the first commercial mesh DWDM system. Previously, he performed early optical networking research at IBM Research. He authored more than 50 papers for international conferences and journals and over 20 patents. He served on the program committee of various conferences and journals and is an invited speaker to many panels, tutorials and courses. He holds a Ph.D. from the Technion, Israel.