Testing the Next-Gen Network:

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Testing the Next-Gen Network:

Make Way for 100GE

December 2012

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Network operators already constrained by 10GE circuits have deployed 40GE, and some are now scaling 100GE across backbone, metro and even access platforms. Standards, favorable costs and growing network traffic help explain Ethernet’s appeal. As 40GE and 100GE circuits become more widespread, operators will need to enhance their test and measurement (T&M) equipment accordingly. The latest test set from VeEX is a fitting option.

2. Platform Migration

Legacy infrastructure continues to play a role in today’s networks. The private line market in the U.S., for instance, which includes T1, T3, OC3 and OC12 circuits, is still growing; the demand for Ethernet services, however, is simply growing much faster.1_{According to the Vertical Systems Group, global bandwidth}

purchased for business Ethernet connections exceeded the volume used for legacy data services in 2011.2

Carriers are encouraging this trend. It began with early adopters, such as the CLEC division of

Cablevision, Optimum Lightpath. In 2005, Lightpath capped its growth of TDM-based products and began inducing customers to adopt Ethernet. Today, this kind of migration is mainstream. In mid 2012, Verizon EVP and CFO Fran Shammo said that it is giving enterprise customers deadlines for either converting to an IP platform or finding another service provider.3

The transition to IP and Ethernet is accelerating. “By 2015, ATM and frame relay will virtually vanish,” said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst of Infonetics Research.4_{While Howard admitted}

that private leased lines would linger, he said the “razor-sharp focus” among businesses for staying competitive is driving the overall trend. Despite a European slowdown in 2011 and 2012, Infonetics anticipates that the market for IP MPLS VPNs and Ethernet services will grow from $50 billion in 2011 to $81 billion worldwide by 2016.

The T&M industry is following this trend. In addition to enterprise adoption of Ethernet in the access network, Frost & Sullivan expects mobile backhaul applications, data center activities and LTE to drive the Ethernet test equipment market. According to F&S Industry Analyst Prathima Bommakanti, the global Ethernet test equipment market (including 1GE, 10GE and 40/100GE) will grow from $822.5 million in 2011 to $1.2 billion in 2016. Within that market, 10GE generated the most revenue 2011, but 40/100GE grew the fastest.5

1 “Move from frame relay and ATM to Ethernet services gains speed,” Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Network World, October 9, 2012. 2 “Global Ethernet Bandwidth Surges as Legacy Networks Migrate to Higher Speed,” Vertical Systems Group, October 25, 2012. 3 “Verizon’s Shammo wants more enterprise customers to migrate to IP services,” Sean Buckley, Fierce Telecom, August 17, 2012. 4 “Ethernet, IP MPLS VPN services to top $81B by 2016, fueled by cloud services, surging data traffic,” Infonetics Research, July 23, 2012.”

5 Ethernet Test Equipment Market–A Buzz with Activity,” Frost & Sullivan, Measurement & Instrumentation, Analyst Briefing Series, Nov 27, 2012.

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3. 10G to 100G

The expansion of 10G to 40/100G has been several years underway. (“G” or “Gig” alone refers to transport optics specified by the ITU-T, or more loosely to both transport and IEEE-based Ethernet standards.)6_{Initial developments beyond 10G were wavelength-related, with vendors promoting various}

modulation techniques to meet network capacity needs. By the late 2000s, network operators were deploying around $500 million of 40G line cards globally.7

Standards accelerated the market. Apart from the ITU’s specifications, the IEEE’s 40GE and 100GE standards emerged in 2010, which aligned timetables of the two technologies.8_{Meanwhile, related}

common form-factor pluggable (CFP) optical modules appeared in 2011.9_{As the economics lined up,}

demonstrations and field trials of 100G gave way to early deployments. The overall optical networking industry has been on hold for much of 2012, but many operators are deciding to go with 100G, some with an eye toward end users.

“We clearly watched as the market and technology was evolving with a lot of our customers as we deployed 10 Gig in a very large scale way back in 2006,” said Donald MacNeil, Chief Marketing Officer at XO Communications in November 2012. “We watched very carefully and made a decision to skip 40G and go right to 100G.”10

MacNeil said XO intended “to help set the pace and give end users something to aim for.” Other carriers are keeping the end-user in mind. In late 2012, Pieter Poll, SVP of national and international network planning for CenturyLink, said that the carrier would use 100G wavelengths for all of its IP backbone growth going forward, “so even consumers benefit from our 100G introduction.”11_{To date CenturyLink}

has completed a 100G upgrade in London, Singapore and on its national backbone and in more than 50 metro areas in the U.S.

CenturyLink’s plans to deploy 100G to the cloud, hosting and collocation services, data centers, and customer business locations it acquired along with Savvis further indicate how 100G is expanding into access platforms.12

4. Testing 100GE

Along with the diffusion of advanced Ethernet technologies comes a need to test and measure the multiple services that they enable. In the end, the argument for testing Ethernet whatever the speed remains the same: Customers expect it.13

These could be internal customers, supporting metro or long-haul networks, which remain the

predominant applications for 40G and 100G. Or as those technologies proliferate, the customers could be external cloud-based e-commerce platforms, content delivery networks (CDNs), wireless operators needing backhaul or enterprises seeking various types of connectivity.

6 See ITU-T G.709 OTU-3, OTU-4.

7 See Ovum’s Global 40G Optical Networking Market Forecast, 2005 – 2013. 8 See IEEE 802.3ba for 100GE and 40GE, ratified in June 2010.

9 These deployments followed the Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) organization’s CFP 1.4 specification, also released in June 2010. 10 See “Ethernet Expo 2012: XO’s 100G Update,” LightReading, November 12, 2012.

11 “CenturyLink Exec Details 100 Gbps Backbone and Metro Upgrade,” Joan Engebretson, Telecompetitor, November 14, 2012. 12 CenturyLink completed its acquisition of cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions provider Savvis in July 2011.

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Any such application could qualify as mission critical. That means handling with care: not only qualifying the physical layer, but also identifying circuits, testing those circuits at turn-up and verifying that the actual amount of Ethernet traffic complies with internal parameters or service level agreements (SLAs). There is no secret to this kind of testing, which is roughly comparable to what was available when GigE began deploying widely ten years ago. At that point there was limited network intelligence and no carrier-grade equipment.

What changed the GigE scenario? The answer includes the Metro Ethernet Forum, the concept of carrier-grade Ethernet and the rise of intelligent network devices. Those devices, however, reside

primarily at the network’s edge, and although some operators are beginning to deploy 100G as an access platform, it remains largely an optical transport technology. Without Layer 2 intelligent edge devices, an operator wanting to assess these types of circuits would use well-established procedures, such as standard loopback testing.

This kind of testing comes in two kinds. In a physical loopback for 100GE, a test unit pumps out standardized Ethernet 100GE traffic to either another test unit or a logical loop at the far end of the network, at which point the signals return to the receiving end of the source unit. In a logical loopback, which requires Layer 2 capabilities, the process involves the swapping of header information, so that the source becomes the destination, and vice versa.

5. The VePAL UX400

To help network operators meet these test challenges, VeEX created the VePAL UX400, the latest in its family of portable test devices. Taller than the TX300 platform to accommodate the advanced optical interfaces, the UX400 remains a compact (less than 10 kg) multi-service transport test set, with capabilities ranging from DS1/E1 (T1) all the way up to 40G and 100G.

Its versatility derives from a modular architecture that allows for up to six independent test applications, comprising of any combination of modules (with the 40G/100G module occupying two slots) including:

• 1G, supporting 10/100/1000Base-T and 100Base-X interfaces

• 2.5G, supporting legacy PDH/DSN interfaces and SDH/SONET interfaces up to STM-16/OC48 and OTU1

• 10G, supporting 10GE LAN/WAN, 10GE SONET/SDH (OC192/STM-64) and OTN rates (OTU2, OTU1e, OTU2e)

• 40G/43G SDH/OTU3, supporting STM-256 and OTU3

• 40G/100G combined module, with pluggable CFPs, supporting 40GE, 10GE, OTU3, and OTU4 The supported testing includes those derived from the ITU-T Y.1564 Service Activation Methodology (SAM) and the older RFC2544, or IETF Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices. Among the enhancements that Y.1564 offers over RFC2544 are a more realistic generation of concurrent streams, the addition of frame delay variation (FDV) or jitter, and the efficiency of being able to test all service-critical parameters simultaneously.14

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VeEX is a registered trademark of VeEX Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

The 40GE and 100GE testing scenarios are relatively straightforward. Once a fiber has been separately certified to handle 100G rates, an operator can configure the UX400 for particular QoS parameters and traffic profiles to test for 100 percent line rate, which means that a full 100G Layer 2 or Layer 3 (IPv4 or IPv6) traffic has been transmitted. The turn-up of a 100GE network essentially resembles that for 1GE or 10GE, with throughput values verified along with key measurements, such as round trip delay, jitter, frame loss, frame per second and frame count.

Just as enterprises are adopting advanced networking technologies with a “razor-sharp focus” on competitiveness, so too are network operators looking for any possible edge in operational efficiencies. The UX400 provides an affordable, one-box test set with all the modules that would be required in either the field or a centralized location, along with a software architecture that enables multiple users to access and operate different modules simultaneously. It is a testing set that embraces the 100GE era’s concern for speed and efficiency.

About VeEX®

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, VeEX provides innovative test and measurement solutions for next-generation communication equipment and networks. Founded in 2006 by test and measurement industry veterans, VeEX builds products that blend advanced technology and vast technical expertise with the discerning measurement needs of customers.

VeEX core expertise and product lines range from Broadband and Cable TV to Metro and Next Generation Transport Networks. VeEX’s multinational structure consists of several specialized business units operating in different parts of the world. VeEX has shipped more than 20,000 units since volume production began. Industry consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has benchmarked VeEX against other leading test and

measurement companies. As a result, among other awards, VeEX is the proud recipient of the 2009 Global Gigabit Ethernet Test Equipment Price Performance Value of the Year, 2009 Global xDSL Test Equipment Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award, and the 2008 Global Test & Measurement Emerging Company of the Year.

The VeEX team brings simplicity to tomorrow’s networks.

Testing the Next-Gen Network: