With the advent of digital life, network traffic is growing rapidly, and user experience requirements are becoming increasingly high. Operators have regarded video, 5G, enterprise services, and other important development strategies as part of their carrier network planning and construction for the next five years. In order to provide the best user experience, reduce network operating costs, and improve investment efficiency, deploying OTN at CO sites on the edge of urban areas and building smart and simple networks have become the common choice of operators.

Emerging businesses make high bandwidth and low latency a must-have

Video services require high bandwidth and low latency to support their development. According to relevant predictions, by 2021, the proportion of 4K ultra clear videos in the total network traffic will increase from 2% in 2017 to 20%, with video driving the high-speed growth of network traffic at a CAGR of 25%. The switching and interaction of videos such as 4K/AR/VR are increasingly demanding low latency. Taking 4K as an example only, the E2E latency requirement is 20ms, which is much higher than the 50ms requirement for HD video.

The basic characteristics of 5G services are high bandwidth and low latency. The average bandwidth of 5G base stations will exceed 1Gbps, with a peak of around 10Gbps, representing a tenfold increase in bandwidth compared to the 4G era. In some new business scenarios of 5G, the end-to-end latency is required to be less than 10ms, and the transmission part cannot exceed 5ms.

Dedicated line services require quality assurance with high bandwidth and low latency. With the digital development of various industries, enterprise dedicated lines are also evolving from Mbit level to 100M, GE/10GE, and even 100GE. Taking DC interconnection as an example, 100GE is the basic business granularity requirement. Taking high-frequency trading in the financial industry as an example, 1ms means 303 transactions, which can drive an annual trading volume of over 100 million US dollars.

The most basic requirement for the best user experience is high bandwidth and low latency. So, how to build the best experience bearer network for high bandwidth and low latency?

OTN to the edge, creating the ultra wide and intelligent best experience carrier network

Metropolitan area CO is a comprehensive service access point for the network, where home wide, mobile, and even dedicated line services will converge at CO sites, and its importance is increasing. Deploying OTN to CO sites has become a consensus among many operators. This is mainly because:

·OTN ultra wide network, with a hundred fold increase in capacity. The construction of the carrier network needs to meet the traffic demand for at least the next 3-5 years. With the development of video, 5G and other services, typical CO will reach 100G+traffic. OTN can provide a large bandwidth of 100G/over 100G, with a system capacity of up to T bits, making it the best investment choice to meet current needs and smoothly evolve towards the future.

·OTN minimalist network for the best user experience. Traditional networks adopt a multi-layer architecture, and during the hop by hop forwarding process, there is a high packet loss rate and latency, making it difficult to guarantee user experience. OTN uses electrical layer ODUk or optical layer wavelength for through transmission, which can fully reduce network layers, create a flat and minimalist architecture, achieve one hop direct service from CO to CR (core router), zero packet loss and lowest latency, achieve the best user experience, and enhance the competitiveness of operators.

·Configure MS-OTN, comprehensive bearer, one network for multiple uses. In traditional solutions, different services require different networks to carry them, such as dedicated lines and traditional voice over SDH networks, and home broadband over data networks. MS-OTN (Multi Service Optical Transport Network) can achieve unified cross scheduling and unified line transmission based on VC/Packet/ODUk, thus supporting the carrying of various services such as Ethernet services, large particle dedicated line services, TDM type dedicated line services, DCI, etc. in one network, helping operators achieve multi use in one network, accelerate network integration, and reduce operating costs.

·Enable TSDN and intelligent management. The optical network based on TSDN (Transport Software Defined Network) has the characteristics of openness and elasticity, supports rich APP applications and business innovation, can achieve automatic adaptation of transmission rate and distance in various application scenarios, intelligent routing based on delay strategy, and can also achieve unified scheduling and intelligent management of network resources across layers and domains.

OTN to the edge, enabling MS-OTN and TSDN, is a solution for the development of video, 5G, and cloud services, building ultra wide, intelligent, and optimal user experience bearer networks, and achieving optimal investment returns.