In a recent white paper on Open, Automated and Programmable Transport Networks, the authors at Heavy Reading stated: “software-defined networking (SDN) was never really about a specific protocol (e.g., OpenFlow). Rather, it was about a specific goal to build flexible, automated, and programmable networks that deliver new services to market faster and reduce overall network costs.” [1, underlines added for emphasis.] Put another way, the introduction of automation, while fascinating to discuss, requires a real-world impact that cannot be achieved through manual processes. Otherwise, there are simply too many other priorities on the to-do list and automation will always remain a “nice idea to talk about” without a clear path to implementation.
In the same Heavy Ready report, when network operators were asked what key objectives they wanted to achieve with the optical transport layer, the responses were the ability to move capacity flexibly and remotely across any path and the ability to easily connect to new locations with minimal truck rolls. [1]
To highlight the value of these capabilities, companies today are working on part of the opportunities listed above. Companies such as Megaport and Packet Fabric allows users to remotely configure connections across networks to create bandwidth on demand. To highlight the value of this, Megaport recently reported their results for fiscal year 2022 with $109 million in annual revenue growing > 40% annually and with gross margins above 60% [2]. The Megaport product is similar to virtual interconnections offered by multi-tenant data centers (MTDCs) for connections within their data center network. While these virtual interconnects allow enterprises to adjust bandwidth on demand, virtual interconnects are achieved by connection to a large router/switch and rely on shared infrastructure. Due to privacy and security requirements, most enterprises in the finance, health and government fields avoid virtual connections and require dedicated interconnects. For this reason, automation for these customers will require automation and remote management at the fiber layer. And of course, to access the virtual connections such as Megaport or the MTDC fabrics requires having a physical connection in the first place.
The second desire listed above was to connect to new locations with minimal truck rolls. While this is more of an operational expense than creating a new capability, truck rolls can be very expensive for network operators. Budget estimates range from $1,000 to $3,000 per truck roll. The cost depends on the distances covered and whether third party service providers are used as is the case for some of the more remote / out-of-network sites for nationwide service providers. For the MTDCs, as they expand beyond their current ”NFL city” metro regions to offer capacity at the 2nd and 3rd tier cities, automation and remote management at these sites will be required for efficient operation at the these mostly unmanned facilities.
With the value of fiber layer automation demonstrated by the use cases above, what technology options exist today? Companies have worked on automated fiber management solutions for at least 20 year – with a range of technologies such as MEMS and piezo-electric actuators to robotic fiber management. A challenge with MEMS and piezo based actuators has been high cost, high loss and a limited scale of a few hundred ports per system. Recently, robotic fiber management solutions have been developed, with new approaches that allow large scale systems with over 1,000 ports per system.
Telescent has developed a robotic patch panel that can address the requirements for automating fiber management. The Telescent system is purely fiber-based, offering low loss and a latching design that matches manual patch panel performance. When an add, move or drop is requested, the Telescent robot grabs the end of the fiber and weaves it around the other fibers in the system to the requested port. A key advance in the Telescent system is an algorithm that the robot uses to weave around the other fibers while avoiding any blocking or knotting. This preserves the ability of the system to make any connection request (i.e. non-blocking) while scaling to over 1,000 duplex ports per system. Test equipment such as power meters and OTDRs can be included with the Telescent system to allow monitoring of any fiber when requested. The Telescent system also meets the reliability requirements for data centers and has passed NEBS Level 3 certification as well as multiple customer trials and has over 1 billion port hours in operation.
The robotic approach of the Telescent system can address both applications outlined in the Heavy Reading survey. It can deliver services such as bandwidth-on-demand remotely. And when the Telescent system is placed in remote sites, it clearly avoids the need for truck rolls to turn on new services at the remote locations.
While the Telescent system can address the top desires identified in the Heavy Reading survey these are just a few of the many applications of a robotic patch panel. Once the Telescent system is added to the fiber network, a full range of benefits from automation can be achieved.
[1] Open, Automated, & Programmable Transport Networks: A 2022 Heavy Reading Survey A Heavy Reading white paper produced for Ciena, Fujitsu, Infinera, and Juniper Networks.