From the early days of the Internet to today, data traffic has grown exponentially. As a statistic to demonstrate just how much data is being generated and consumed, 90% of the data that exists today has been generated in the last 2 years (Dr. Katharine Schmidtke, OCP Plenary, May 12, 2020). Networks have responded to this exponential growth by improvements in hardware as well as network architecture designs. Transmission speeds have increased from 10 Gbit/s to 100 Gbit/s and are evolving to 400 Gbit/s. Network architectures have also evolved from static and decentralized networks to using Software Defined Networking (SDN) that allows flexibility and easier troubleshooting. While almost every network component has evolved from the early internet days, there is one function that is still done the same way it has been done for 30 years – the manual patch panel for physical fiber cross-connect. It is time to bring the cross-connect into the 21st century.
Figure 1: Technician in front of a manual patch panel.
The need for SDN was driven by trends such as changing traffic patterns, the rise of cloud services, and Big Data. New applications drove new traffic patterns that were more machine-to-machine (“east-to-west” traffic) compared to the older network usage that was more client-to-server (“north-south”). The rise of cloud services and mobile devices has increased the diversity of access to applications and data – consumers want access to their data from home, office, and on the road. And Big Data technologies such as machine learning or natural language processing have created huge datasets with increasing and variable demand on computing power and storage. SDN aimed to address these challenges by introducing a protocol that was directly programmable, agile, centrally managed, and programmatically configured. While SDN can be applied to the transport, switching, and routing level of the network, the underlying physical network has remained static.
Some attempts have been made to allow software control of the cross-connect through virtualization. Just like virtualization has allowed computing power to be shared among multiple users, higher data speeds allow virtual cross-connects. If an enterprise only needs 1 Gbit/s data rates, then they can share a 10 Gbit connection with other users, and this virtualization can be managed within the routers or switches. However, this virtualization still depends on having the underlying physical connection.
New automated systems such as the Telescent G4 Network Topology Manager (NTM) now allow software control of the physical layer with dynamic control of cross-connects while offering remote diagnostic capabilities such as power monitoring or OTDR functionality. The Telescent NTM uses a robot to route a fiber to any of the ports to offer any-to-any connectivity of the 1,008 ports in the system. The NTM can be initially configured with fewer than the full number of ports and upgraded in a pay-as-you-grow manner. Once made, the connections are equivalent to existing fiber patch panel connections with low loss and are fully latched, allowing traffic to continue uninterrupted as the system is upgraded. Multiple NTMs systems can be managed through software control offering scaling to 10,000 cross-connects and beyond with machine accurate record-keeping and limiting stranded capacity.
Reviewing the benefits of SDN, the Telescent NTM brings the benefits of SDN to the physical layer. It offers direct programmability of the cross-connect by simply selecting the desired connection between the input and output port. The physical layer can be agile to respond to changing traffic patterns and loads. It can be centrally managed through the integration of the REST API controlling the Telescent NTM into the existing network operating system. Finally, the physical fiber layer can be programmatically configured based on the desired network state or through learning algorithms.
As a final consideration, automation is also a method to improve quality and reduce manpower requirements. In a recent article by the Uptime Institute tracking outages and slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report stated that “some recent data center outages that Uptime Institute has tracked were clearly the result of operator or management error — but this is a usual occurrence” (https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/pandemic-is-causing-some-outages-and-slowdowns/). In a separate article about the major concerns of data center operators, 60% of data center owners reported difficulty finding or retaining skilled staff, with research showing that insufficient staffing can be associated with increased levels of failures and incidents (https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/covid19-data-center-worries/). The Telescent NTM can reduce both operator error and the need for additional staff, solving each of the problems listed above. With the Telescent NTM, the physical fiber cross-connect can finally be brought into the 21st century.