With the development of the IP-based broadband service, the number of fixed and mobile subscribers has been constantly increasing in recent years. Meanwhile, the advancement of the network technology enables people to obtain remote information easily and effectively. Customers in different areas can thus communicate in a face-to-face manner. In addition, network information covers contents from texts and voices to multimedia presentations, and then to videos or even high-definition video, which impel the rapid increase in IP traffic. The latest report from the ABI shows that in the coming five years, the annual compound growth rate of the IP traffic will reach 50%, in which the growth rate accounts for 62% to the total growth rate. The report also shows that the growth rate of the broadband access for mobile networks reaches as high as 128%.

The rapid growth of the network traffic accelerates the expansion of the forwarding capacity of the LPUs on the transmission devices (such as routers), from 1 Gbit/s, 2.5 Gbit/s, and 10 Gbit/s to 40 Gbit/s and 100 Gbit/s. A single device can provide a large capacity in the case that its LPUs support 100 Gbit/s forwarding capacities. In this situation, the operator's operation and maintenance cost are reduced and users can enjoy fast and effective remote communications.

With the help of years of experience accumulated in the telecom industry (especially in the router and optical transmission application) and the deep understanding of the customers' needs, Huawei proposes the industry-leading end-to-end 100G solution. The 100GE LPU is first applied to the core network and will be extended to devices on the edge and metro networks. The core network, consisting of the NE5000E clusters that support the 100GE interface and the OSN6800/8800 OTNs that support the 40/80λ x 100G, supports the long-distance transmission of traffic at the rate of 100 Gbit/s. In this manner, the openness and reliability of the entire network are improved, and the planning, construction, and maintenance of the network are facilitated. On the edge and metro network, NE5000E clusters are directly connected through 100GE interfaces. This simplifies the network structure and allows operators to easily cope with the traffic localization. Figure 1 illustrates the overview of Huawei end-to-end 100G solution.

 

 

1.Deployable end-to-end solution

At present, the transmission distance of the 100GE optical module is 10 km. The 100GE interface, however, is first applied to the core network, where the transmission distance is greater than 10 km. In this situation, the core router must closely cooperate with the transmission system to guarantee the long-distance transmission. The Huawei Optical Transport Network (OTN) product, adopting the 100G opto-electronic module and core chips and integrating with advanced code modulation modes (such as OPFDM-DQPSK, oPDM-DQPSK, and ePDM-QPSK), extends its transmission distance to 1,500 km, which improves the transmission capacity of a single fiber to 8 T. Driven by technologies such as OTN switching and intelligent Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON), the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) transmission network is evolving towards a more capacious, flexible and efficient, and highly reliable network.

The interoperability between routers and transmission devices is a major concern in constructing 100G networks. Huawei, with its experiences in routers and transport devices leading in the industry and its contribution to the 100G standards, realizes the interoperation between 100GE router and the 100G transmission device, which provides a perfect end-to-end 100G solution.

2.Sustainable Bandwidth Expansion

A sustainable bandwidth expansion cannot be achieved at the cost of increasing power consumption and expenditure. Huawei 100G solution employs multiple low-power consumption technologies to guarantee the sustainable bandwidth expansion. These technologies reduce the power consumption of every 10G interface to less than 40 W, 57% lower than that of the industry level.

3.Enhanced Quality Control

In actual applications on the operator's network, end-to-end services cannot be guaranteed by only the increase of bandwidth, for example:

1) Even in the case of sufficient bandwidth, the IPTV service, however, cannot be guaranteed and fault that causes the poor service quality cannot be located.

2) P2P services now dominate the Internet. The P2P terminal, however, cannot identify the network topology. As a result, over 90% IP traffic flows to the core network rather than being localized as that of the traditional telecommunication services. This prevents the sustainable expansion of the core network and degrades the user experience.

3) The expansion of the bandwidth and intelligentization of the access terminal bring great convenience to users but create favorable conditions for DDoS attacks, the major threat to the security of the network.

The preceding information shows that both the expansion of the bandwidth and the low-cost deployment of the intelligence are necessary conditions to guarantee the quality of end-to-end services. Huawei names this deployable quality assurance solution Enhanced Quality Control (EQC). EQC is an entire network solution which can be deployed to any position on the MAN or backbone network to guarantee the service quality and reduce the operator's operation cost. Huawei integrates some EQC capabilities on the hardware and chips, so as to effectively lower the deployment cost. The EQC can provide the following functions:

1) Support for service expansion: identifies and then satisfies services that have special requirements on quality quality.

2) Traffic control and evacuation: controls the flow direction of network traffic and optimizes the resource configuration.

3) Service quality monitoring: monitors the service quality in real time. In this case, the fault can be located and rectified on time.

4) DDOS attack defense: protects the device and a certain network against DDOS attacks.

5) Fast fault location: cooperates with service quality monitoring to fast locate the fault on the device or the link.

The IEEE, ITU-T, and OIF are three standardization organizations that address the 100G standards. Huawei is the chief contributor to the 100G standard. Huawei puts forward at least 10 proposals covering the fields such as 100GE PCS model and OTN mapping to the IEEE and at least 30 proposals covering the applications such as ODU4 mapping structure to the ITU-T SG15. Besides that, Huawei cooperates with the ITU-T SG15 to advance the OTN standardization and has a seat to the edition of the G.709. Huawei makes a number of innovations in the 100G application and applies the 100G standard to its products.

1. Solar 2.0 PFE2A: 100 Gbit/s Packet Forwarding Engine

Currently, the 20/40G LPUs adopting the Huawei-developed Solar Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip Solar 1.0 are commercially deployed in a large scale and are sold more than 100,000 units. The 100GE LPU, as shown in Figure 2, adopts the Solar 2.0 PFE2A chip and has the advantages of flexible application of services, high performance, and low-power consumption.The Solar 2.0 PFE2A chip is developed based on the Macro Instruction for Packet Processing, a technology specialized in the process of IP/MPLS/ETH packets. Compared with the network processor, the Solar 2.0 PFE2A chip has the characteristics of flexible application of services, high performance, and low-power consumption.

 

2. 100GE LPU Solutions100G WDM Code Modulation Technology

Based on the IEEE 802.3ba standard, Huawei provides two types of 100GE LPUs, namely, 1x100GE LPUF-100 (Figure 3) and 10x10GE LPUF-100 (Figure 4), which are used in different application scenarios.

 

 

The 100GE LPU adopts two Solar 2.0 PFE2As as forwarding engines, one of which processes 100 Gbit/s upstream traffic and the other processes 100 Gbit/s downstream traffic. In this manner, the Solar 2.0 PFE2A ensures the traffic forwarding at the wire speed of 100 Gbit/s, as shown in Figure 5. The Physical Interface Card (PIC) module is based on the programmable 100GE MAC chip that is developed by Huawei, and supports IEEE 802.3ba, S-Eth, IEEE 1588v2, and ODU4. The built-in output Traffic Management (oTM) engine enables five-level Hierarchical QoS (HQoS) scheduling of the downstream traffic. The 1x100GE LPU supports a Forwarding Information Base (FIB) with the capacity of 4MB, fully meeting the requirement of IP network expansion. The 100GE interface supports Compact Form Factor Pluggable Multi-Source Agreement (CFP MSA), which implements the plug and play function of optical modules.

 

3. 100G WDM Code Modulation Technology

Advanced code modulation technology is the key to realizing ultra-long-haul and large-capacity WDM transmission technology. Having years of technological experience and industry's leading experts, Huawei develops advanced code modulation technologies such as OPFDM-DQPSK, oPDM-DQPSK, and ePDM-QPSK. The OPFDM-DQPSK technology, through polarization control, effectively reduces the non-linear effects in the high-speed Denseness Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) system, and realizes the ultra-haul transmission over 1200 km. The oPDM-DQPSK technology, through advanced algorithms and hardware, realizes fast optical polarization tracing and the transmission of 80 wavelengths at 100 Gbit/s. The ePDM-QPSK technology is a product of a series of key innovative technologies, including coherence detection, high-speed Analog Digital Conversion (ADC), and high-speed Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Among these technologies, the DSP chip, with the help of advanced algorithms, realizes polarization tracing, phase, clock, and data recovery, dispersion compensation, and Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) compensation. The ePDM-QPSK technology can realize the transmission of 80 wavelengths over 1500 km at 100 Gbit/s, and has a great tolerance of dispersion and PMD.

4. High-gain FEC Technology

The high-gain Forward Error Correction (FEC) technology is a key to the implementation of ultra-haul transmission. To prevent the damage caused by noises to optical signals, it is required that the 100G system should support higher-gain FEC technology. Therefore, Huawei develops the FEC algorithm with high gain and low-power consumption, which reduces the impact of optical signal damage and ensures ultra-haul transmission.

As the world's leading provider of telecommunications solutions, Huawei has contributed its efforts to constructing more than 100 backbone networks and more than 600 Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). In addition, Huawei has delivered over 1000 sets of NE5000E core routers and NE5000E clusters, and over 16 thousand sets of OTN products all across the world. According to the report from the Infonetics Consulting Group, by the end of the first half year of 2009, Huawei has ranked the first place in the world's WDM market, and has also ranked the first in the world's router market share increase, remaining one of the industry's leaders and serving the world's leading operators, including China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, Telefónica, SingTel, and Etisalat.