Huawei’s new liquid OTN solution was designed to massively reduce the complexities involved with low rate OTN connections. At the same time, it is expected to provide low rate, time-division multiplexing (TDM) services users with an all-optical upgrade path.
Huawei Unleashes Liquid OTN
A large percent of the world’s Synchronous Optical Networking/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) and TDM are almost at its end. Despite that, there are still many organizations that use these services and still value the network resiliency and bandwidth guarantees that they have to offer.
Multiple forms of circuit emulation have been developed for the purpose of carrying SONET/SDH and TDM services over packet-switched networks. The disadvantage is that the quality of service (QoS) is too reliant on the ethernet, IP network, or MPLS.
A standard OPN will allow carriers to better manage end-to-end QoS. As a result, it will be able to efficiently transport the Ethernet client signals of 1 Gbps or SONET/SDH.
A Little Background About OTN
The invention of OTNs dates back to the 1990s. Back then, its main purpose was to be a digital wrapper around client signals prior to being transported over wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network. The first OTN models were made to support SONET/SDH clients as well as line rates of 2.5 Gbps and 10 Gbps.
There was also virtual concatenation (VCAT) that was designed to split up SONET/SDH bandwidth for the sake of lower clients.
Path To Enhancing Customer Experience
The 5G effort has always been focused on providing low-latency services as well as giving customers a guaranteed bandwidth when it comes to specific applications to enhance user experience. This was a theme that was extremely prevalent last February 2020 at the Huawei Products and Solutions launch that took place in London.
Even though the event was technically focused on 5G, it also spoke on several other product developments, including Huawei’s Liquid OTN. The goal of this upgraded technology is to overcome the limitations of the previous OTN models when pertaining to low-rate services. Apart from that, it also aims to provide people with a better guarantee when it comes to bandwidth and resiliency to match the current expectations of TDM customers.
One of the Huawei Liquid OTN’s new features is the optical service unit containers that were built to give bandwidths the same granularity level as legacy SDH services. This means that the bandwidth definition will spiral down to 2 Mbps.
Per Huawei claims, the Liquid OTN Solution will flatten the network transport layers resulting in a 70% per latency reduction. With that, customers can expect an all-optical connectivity solution that will provide them with latency and bandwidth guarantees that will work for a wider range of service applications. On top of that, the said customers will benefit from a variety of industry verticals.
Conclusion | Huawei Unleashes Liquid OTN
OTN is considered to be one of the key parts of the global network infrastructure. The Liquid OTN approach is meant to help operators make the most of the value of their OTN networks due to the simplification of the multiplexing hierarchy as well as the direct support the OTN will give to fixed-rate optical services from 2 Mbps to over 100 Gbps.
