Matt Palmer at SDXCentral recently interviewed Sushin Suresan Adackaconam, Lead Product Manager of Cisco’s Optical Systems Group, who is responsible for the NCS 1000 series products for DWDM transport applications.
The interview discusses how multi-vendor deployments and interoperability in networking infrastructure are now achievable in the optical systems area.
- Customers are concerned about both scalability and interoperability in their networks, with the need to balance openness and scale for their operations.
- The discussion centers around the concept of “alien waves,” which refers to running third-party core and optics on a line system not managed by the same software or vendor, offering benefits in cost, space, and power.
- This approach is non-disruptive to the deployed network, as long as the line system is flex grid.
- To manage mixed transponders and line systems, a hierarchical approach with a unified controller or orchestrator is suggested, allowing for a common view of the end-to-end network topology and service assurance.
- Also, standardized interfaces like open config and TAPI are helping to facilitate this management.
Kore-Tek’s View on Cisco Routed Optical Networking (RON)
- Scalability and interoperability are both critical for operators. Kore-Tek believes the best way to achieve both goals is through a disaggregated optical networking architecture. This architecture allows operators to choose the best-of-breed components for each network layer and easily upgrade or replace individual parts as needed.
- Alien waves are a crucial enabler of disaggregated optical networking. Alien waves allow operators to mix and match different vendors’ core interfaces and line systems. This gives operators more flexibility and choice and can help reduce costs.
- Open management is essential for managing a disaggregated optical network. Kore-Tek supports open management standards such as OpenConfig and TAPI. These standards allow operators to use a single management platform to manage all of the components in their network, regardless of vendor.
- Kore-Tek is committed to helping customers evolve their optical networks to meet future demands. Kore-Tek offers a wide range of professional and managed services to support our customer’s implementation, migration, and management of disaggregated optical networking.
- The routed optical networking transformation is already underway. Kore-Tek is already working with various customers and vertical markets to support customers deploying disaggregated optical networking architectures. We’d happily help others understand the pros and cons of building these new optical networks.
- The routed optical networking transformation will lead to a more cost-effective optical network. The routed optical networking transformation will lead to a more cost-effective optical network. Kore-Tek believes that disaggregated optical networking can help operators reduce costs by allowing them to choose the components for each network layer (or even extend existing network components for a few years to reduce costs). It can also help customers and operators reduce operational costs by making managing both their old and new networks easier. Kore-Tek can provide a robust services migration strategy and managed service programs to help offload customers’ operations management before and after migrating these network infrastructures.
Kore-Tek is excited to participate in the transformation of Cisco Routed Optical Networking (RON) from a service perspective. As we support both Cisco, their value added resellers and the customers through this digital transformation which will lead to a more flexible, agile, and cost-effective optical network for our customers.
About Us
Founded by optical network specialists, Kore-Tek is widely recognized for their unparalleled expertise in critical network infrastructure, providing everything from fiber network architectures to multi-technology optical networking, routing and switching implementations.
Trusted and credentialed by major equipment manufacturers and technology service providers — and backed by decades of experience — Kore-Tek engineers have planned, designed, and managed some of the most relied-upon public and private networks in use today, improving network operations and making complex, next generation digital transformations, simple.
Businesses depend on networks. Network professionals depend on Kore-Tek.