Project uses Huawei's OptiXtrans solution to enable full-mesh services and one-hop transmission, reducing network latency.

February 27, 2020

4 Min Read

CHENGDU, China – China Telecom Sichuan announced that they have built a mesh backbone network with Huawei, using Huawei's latest all-optical switching OXC product to reconstruct the provincial backbone optical transmission network, explore the potential of live network resources, expand network capabilities, and improve O&M efficiency to cope with the mid- and long-term challenges brought by digital transformation and new service development in the era of cloud interconnection.

To consistently provide high-quality network services for customers and stay up to date with advanced network technologies, China Telecom Sichuan adheres to continuous investment in network construction and steady improvement of network capabilities. China Telecom Sichuan faces a series of problems during network construction: Network traffic is uneven. Take Chengdu as an example. The traffic on transmission nodes exceeds 75% in hotspot areas, whereas the traffic on other nodes is less than 30%. Equipment room resources are insufficient; space and power supply are insufficient in provincial backbone core equipment rooms; new optical transport planes consume a large number of resources and the construction takes a long time. In addition, the traditional ROADM solution takes up a large amount of equipment room space and uses complex inter-board fiber connections, complicating maintenance.

To meet the requirements of fast network construction, improve network robustness, and reduce TCO, this project uses Huawei's OptiXtrans solution to enable full-mesh services and one-hop transmission, greatly reducing network latency. The project introduces the OXC technology to 12 core nodes of the provincial backbone system, including Chengdu Xinhua, Chengdu Besen, and Mianyang network management building. New devices are interconnected with optical cables to form a mesh network. At the same time, the services carried on the original system are migrated to the new OXC system to form an optical cube network with 12 OXC nodes as the core. In this way, services are directly transmitted at the optical layer in one hop. Huawei's OXC product is based on optical backplane technology with high reliability and low insertion loss. It integrates multiple independent boards in the traditional ROADM solution. This simplifies site deployment, and reduces the footprint of equipment rooms by 80% and optical-layer commissioning time by 80%. Industry-leading LCoS switching technology implements the Pbit/s cross-connection and up to 32 degrees of optical cross-connection grooming, meeting the requirements for mesh interconnection and large-capacity grooming of China Telecom Sichuan's high-value traffic. In addition, Huawei OXC solves complex fiber connections at traditional ROADM sites, simplifies optical-layer connections, implements intra-site optical-layer zero fiber connections, and uses the built-in digital optical parameter detection to detect fiber quality, wavelength performance, wavelength utilization, and wavelength paths in real time. This enables digital O&M at the optical layer, greatly improving network O&M efficiency.

In June 2019, Sichuan Province and China Telecom Sichuan jointly launched the west Sichuan big data center in Ya'an to build a big data industry base. As an important network infrastructure, the provincial backbone optical cube network features high bandwidth, low latency, flexible expansion, and easy O&M, meeting the requirements for fast provisioning and flexible on-demand selection of DC services.

So far, the new OXC 3D-mesh backbone network has been running for more than six months. The network has flexible expansion capabilities and can carry important IDC services. It implements conversion from subrack expansion to board expansion and shortens the response time from months to days. With the high integration and automation features of OXC, China Telecom Sichuan plans to introduce OXC to major metro nodes to release the space of metro equipment rooms and improve metro network O&M efficiency.

Yang Jin, the senior engineer of China Telecom Sichuan's Network Development Dept, said, "China Telecom Sichuan's backbone transport network is undergoing digital transformation and reconstruction. Huawei's all-optical switching OXC product provides us with high bandwidth, low latency, and efficient and simplified networks, which are a good match for Sichuan Telecom's objectives of rapid development and network simplification, speeding up service rollout and providing customers with optimal network experience."

Simon Lu, President of Huawei Transmission Network Domain, said, "We are glad to work with Sichuan Telecom to build a modern optical transmission network. This network can meet the development requirements of new services in the cloud interconnection era of Sichuan Telecom, improve network O&M efficiency, and provide ultimate experience for end users. Huawei will continue to carry out innovation and research to provide customers with sustainable and evolvable solutions, and help customers achieve business success."

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd

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