Re: Routed optical networks

[Etienne-Victor Depasquale via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

Very helpful observations, Matt, thank you.

How comfortably does the phrase "routed optical networks over Ethernet
without ROADMs" sit with you?
I mean: would you accept a limitation of "optical network" to the case of
a network without optical layer switching (of the type done by add-drop
multiplexers)?

Cheers,

Etienne

On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 10:57 PM Matt Erculiani <merculiani () gmail com> wrote:

> Hi Etienne
>
> In short, the idea is that optical networks are wasteful and routers do a
> better job making more use of a network's capacity than ROADMs. Take the
> extra router hop (or 3 or 8) versus short-cutting it with an optical
> network because the silicon is so low-latency anyway that it hardly makes a
> difference now. Putting more GBs per second on fewer strands means saving a
> lot of money on infrastructure costs.
>
> 400G ZR comes to mind as a foundational technology since it basically made
> active optical muxponder equipment obsolete in the metro. The savings here
> means telcos/enterprises can afford more router ports, which we've already
> established can utilize paths more efficiently anyway. Otherwise, this is
> more of a concept and can be executed with a variety of pre-existing
> technologies, or someone's new secret sauce that bakes everything together
> like SD-WAN did to its constituent technologies.
>
> -Matt
>
>
> On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 12:30 PM Etienne-Victor Depasquale via NANOG <
> nanog () nanog org> wrote:
>
> > Hello folks,
> >
> > Simple question: does "routed optical networks" have a clear meaning in
> > the metro area context, or not?
> >
> > Put differently: does it call to mind a well-defined stack of
> > technologies in the control and data planes of metro-area networks?
> >
> > I'm asking because I'm having some thoughts about the clarity of this
> > term, in the process of carrying out a qualitative survey of the results of
> > the metro-area networks survey.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Etienne
> >
> > --
> > Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
> > Assistant Lecturer
> > Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
> > Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
> > University of Malta
> > Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale
>
>
> --
> Matt Erculiani
> ERCUL-ARIN


-- 
Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
Assistant Lecturer
Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
University of Malta
Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale