Development of IP/WDM Optical Networks

Mirosław Klinkowski and Marian Marciniak

National Institute of Telecommunications, Department of Transmission and Fiber
Technology, 1 Szachowa Street, 04-894 Warsaw, Poland
[email protected] , [email protected]

Foreseen immense interest of IP technology in the nearest future induces a research for more
effective methods of utilizing this technology. Almost all types of traffic run over Internet.
Practically all forms of end-user communications (like real-time voice, video) today make use
of the ubiquitous TCP/IP protocols. Many new services and applications being offered are
also based on IP protocols. Present challenge is to assure adequate big throughput to transport
IP traffic through the network. Huge available transmission capacity of optical WDM
networks, and advances in optical component technologies (e.g. fibers, amplifiers, laser
sources, filters) and more advanced WDM subsystems such as OXCs/WRSs (Optical Cross-
connects/Wavelength Routing Switches), OADM (Add-Drop Multiplexers), seem to be the
best way for development of IP networks.

There are some types of optical networks considered to work with IP technologies:
- optical-link networks – consist of all-electronic switches interconnected by optical
single/multi-channel point-to point links and “non-switching” optical components,
- wavelength-routed networks – consist of “non-switching” optical components, optical
circuit switches (OADMs and OXCs), and optionally tunable transmitters/receivers,
- optical burst-switching (OBS) networks,
- photonic packet-switched networks.

optical photonic packet-switched networks

network High
Bandwidth
functionality optical burst-switched networks utilization

Latency
adaptive wavelength routed networks (MPLS) Med.
Implementation
static wavelength routed networks difficulty
Adaptivity (to
Low traffic and fault)
optical links networks

wavelength OBS packet

Present time Optical Switching Paradigm

Fig. 1 Evolution of optical network technology Fig. 2 Characteristics of main optical switching paradigms

Deploying OXCs with MPLS traffic engineering in the Internet backbone is a natural first
step towards an optical Internet [1], [2], [3]. This approach employs WDM within the
backbone, where it is mostly needed to alleviate packet processing and forwarding, while the
rest of the Internet's current architecture remains as it is today. A next step would be to
implement a different switching technique, namely optical burst switching, in addition to the
traditional circuit switching. The last step towards an optical Internet is to replace
conventional IP routers by optical packet switches, in which packets remain in the optical
domain while being switched from the input to the output port.
Nowadays, only optical-link networks are feasible and are already in use (see fig. 1). Optical
packet switching and optical burst switching are still in the research phase. Current
commercial attention is directed at wavelength-routed networks.

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Although almost all optical switching technologies are designed to cooperate with traditional
transmission techniques like ATM, SDH, their abilities to support transmission of IP packets
seem to be the most important.

Wavelength-routed IP/MPLS networks

Wavelength routing is a form of optical circuit switching, where a dedicated wavelength
connection is established. This connection is known as lightpath and it consists of the same
allocated on each link along the path. The lightpath may consist of different wavelengths
along the path if wavelength converters are present. Usually there is almost no requirement
for the format and the bitrate of the data transmitted in the lightpath. Data remains in the
optical domain throughout the entire lightpath. In view of this, it is often referred to as a
transparent lightpath. A first-generation optical IP network can run on top of a lightpath.

IP Network

LSR LER
Optical Network
OXC OXC

MPS MPLS
OXC

MPS

MPS
OXC OXC

LSR
LER

MPLS LSR MPLS

Fig. 3 Model of wavelength-routed IP/MPLS/MPLambdaS network, LER – label edge IP router, LSR
– label switched IP router, OXC – optical crossconnect

Wavelength-routed network, consisting of optical circuit switches (OADM’s/OXC’s), may be

used to interconnect a set of backbone IP routers (see Fig. 3) [4], [5]. Multi-Protocol Lambda
Switching, a technique that extends MPLS traffic engineering control to work with the optical
cross-connnects (OXCs) in the wavelength routed network, may be used to establish
lightpaths between an ingress and an egress IP router. With MPLS, an OXC provisions
lightpaths by establishing a relation between an (input port, input wavelength) tuple and an
(output port, output wavelength) tuple. IP packets are forwarded by conventional IP routers
until they reach an ingress backbone router. Based on their destination, IP packets are sent by
the ingress IP router on an appropriate wavelength so that they travel to the egress IP router
through the backbone of OXCs completely within the optical domain. Beyond the egress
router, the IP packets are again forwarded by conventional IP routers until they reach their
final destination. Multi protocol label switching (MPLS) concepts can be extended to optical
transport networks (so-called MPLambdaS). For MPLambdaS, the core idea is to use
wavelength channels as labels and to establish appropriate routing paths in the network. Such
paths allow fast switching of data without requiring complex routing processes along the path.

Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks

Recently, OBS was proposed as a new switching paradigm for optical networks requiring less
complex technology than packet switching. OBS is based on concepts developed several years

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ago for electronic burst switching networks [6]. Optical burst switching is a technique for
transmitting bursts of traffic through an optical transport network by setting up a connection
and reserving resources end-to-end for only one burst.

O/E/O
... control packet processing – ...
control wavelength setup, bandwidth
reservation
Output
Input fiber
Demux
fiber

Mux
Switch
... ...

data wavelength

Fig. 4 Model of Optical Burst Switching

An OBS network consists of optical burst switches interconnected with WDM links. An
optical burst switch transfers a burst coming in from an input port to its destination output
port (Fig. 4). Depending upon the switch architecture, it may or may not be equipped with
optical buffering. The transmission links in the OBS network can carry multiple channels, and
an optical burst is assigned to a channel dynamically. The channels are implemented using
WDM or optical time division multiplexing (OTDM). The control packet associated with a
burst may be also transmitted over one of those channels, or it may be transmitted over a non-
optical network. The length of a burst may vary from one to several IP packets. Currently,
OBS networks do not exist.
Label switching concepts (MPLS) can be easily integrated with burst switching concepts [6],
[7].

Photonic packet-switched IP networks

IP routing and switching is emerging as a key to future expansion of data and other internet-
related services. Electronic packet switching offers great potential, but is ultimately limited in
data rate and throughput, by the processing capacity of electric devices. The ultimate solution
is to replace electronic packet switches with optical packet switches in which signals remain
in optical form [8], [9]. Packet switches are “label-based”, in that they use only information in
packet headers (labels) to decide how to switch a packet.
The merging of packet switching with photonic technologies opens up the possibility of
packet switching in transparent photonic media.
The wide-bandwidth of photonic components provides a potential of packet-switched
networks with throughput in the terabit per second range [9].

Header
Electronic Controller – header recognition, processing, generation

Packet
Routing, buffering
...
...
Synchronizer Header
replacement
...
payload

Fig. 5 Illustration of a photonic packet switching

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The implementation of photonic packet switches is shown in Fig. 5 and it includes:
1) packet synchronization and timing recovery – a general implementation of packet
synchronization consists of a packet start recognizer, which identify the packet start, and a
programmable delay module, which adjusts arrival time of packets,
2) packet header replacement – packet header replacement is implemented using SOA gates
and can by improved by wavelength conversion technique,
3) packet buffering – useful optical RAM suitable for photonic packet switching has not yet
been found, therefore alternative solutions are considered: advanced electronic RAM – it
has limited access speed, and it requires O/E/O conversions, and optical delay-line based
buffers (traveling-type and recirculating-type) without or with WDM capabilities,
4) packet routing – photonic packet switch architectures use photonic means to perform
packet buffering and routing, while electronics plays an important role in such functions
as address processing, routing and buffering controls. There are many different packet
switch architectures, like a wavelength-routed photonic packet switch, broadcast-and-
select packet switch, and space-switch based photonic packet switch.

Truly photonic switches require photonic implementation of all of these functions.

Conclusions
Optical wavelength-routed IP/MPLS networks could be a valid solution in the short time.
Optical burst switching may represent an interesting method in the mid/long term. Optical
packet switching can be seen as the last step of such an evolutionary path. To achieve
satisfactory performance, significant efforts are required in developing key optical devices
and components such as semiconductor optical amplifiers, optical gates and space switches,
wavelength converters, fast tunable lasers and filters, and wavelength routers [9]. Also some
breakthroughs are needed in order to realize mature optical devices which allow dynamic
buffering of optical packets.

References
[1] Lisong Xu, Harry Perros, George Rouskas, Department of Computer Science North Carolina State
University, “Transporting IP Packets over Light: A Survey”, March 2000
[2] Nasir Ghani, Sudhir Dixit, Ti-Shiang Wang, “On IP-over-WDM Integration”, IEEE Communications
Magazine, March 2000
[3] Marco Listanti, Vinzenco Eramo, Roberto Sabella, “Architectural and Technological Issues for Future
Optical Networks”, IEEE Communications Magazine, September 2000
[4] N. Chandhok, A. Durresi, R. Jagannathan, R. Jain, S. Seetharaman, K. Vinodkrishnan, “IP over Optical
Networks: A Summary of Issues”, IETF Internet draft, July 2000
[5] Bala Rajagopalan, James Luciani, Daniel Awduche, Brad Cain, Bilel Jamoussi, Debanjan Saha, “IP over
Optical Networks: A Framework”, IETF Internet draft, November 2000
[6] Klaus Dolzer, Christoph Gauger, Jan Späth, Stefan Bodamer, “Evaluation of Reservation Mechanisms for
Optical Burst Switching”, AEÜ Int. J. Electron. Commun. 55 (2001) No. 1, 1–1
[7] Chunming Qiao, “Label Optical Burst Switching for IP-over-WDM Integration”, IEEE Communications
Magazine, September 2000
[8] Shun Yao, Biswanath Mukherjee, Sudhir Dixit, “Advances in Photonic Packet Switching: An Overview”,
IEEE Communications Magazine, February 2000
[9] Rodney S.Tucker, Wen De Zhong, “Photonic Packet Switching: An Overview”, IEICE Trans. Commun.,
vol.E82 B, no. 2 February 1999