A group of major incumbent service providers and their vendor partners will hold a global test of Ethernet services over OTN transport, including data and control plane technology during their fifth annual Interoperability 2012 event.
Hosted by service providers Deutsche Telekom XETRA: DTE.DE), France Telecom/Orange (NYSE: FTE), KDDI and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), the group will conduct tests of various vendors' equipment. Additionally, AT&T (NYSE: T), China Telecom and NTT (NYSE: NTT) will consult on the interoperability test.
Participating vendors in the event include the likes of ADVA Optical Networking (XETRA: ADV.DE), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN), EXFO, Huawei, Marben Products, Metaswitch, and Tellabs (Nasdaq: TLAB).
During the event, service providers will be able to evaluate vendor technologies and how they can integrate it into their respective networks. Specifically, the testing will focus on updates to the existing OIF ENN-I 2.0 and UNI 2.0 Implementation Agreements under development, with extensions for both multi-layer and OTN.
OIF said that the primary goal of the testing will be to see how they can "marry Ethernet as the predominant access and client interconnect technology, and OTN as the dominant transport technology."
Such tests will be helpful especially for existing large service providers that have a large installed base of SONET/SDH in their respective networks. While it's clear that these service providers are migrating from SONET/SDH to packet-based Ethernet and OTN, the reality is they will have to simultaneously serve a large installed base of TDM-based services for a number of years.
Similar to their recently announced interoperability test of the 28 Gbps Very Short Reach interface draft standard, the group will demonstrate their Ethernet over OTN interoperability findings at the upcoming OFC/NFOEC trade show, March 6-8.
For more:
- see the release
Special report: Stepping to the EoC plate: Incumbent telcos take a swing
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