100GET-OCTET - Higher Speed Networking

Future telecommunications networks have to be able to transport highly increased packet traffic volumes at strongly reduced cost per bit basis. Due to exponentially growing traffic volumes and almost flat rate pricing, the needed capacity has to be provided at least at the same level of total costs, or even below, compared with today. At the same time, it is necessary for converged networks to maintain the performance and resiliency at carrier grade level. The simplification of the network architecture and the introduction of higher speed interfaces point towards that direction. A cost efficient transport has to be founded and performed in those layers with respect to the optical and packet network, which offer lowest cost per bit performance at carrier grade quality. Furthermore, a traffic aggregation towards terabit transmission for scalable networks is expected, increasing both the speed up to 100 Gbit/s standardized interfaces and beyond and the utilization of the optical transmission path of fibers by increasing the spectral efficiency. In this paper the status of standardization of higher speed interfaces is reviewed, first 100 Gbit/s transmission experiments over Deutsche Telekom field installed fibers within the BMBF 100GET OCTET project are presented, and the layered architecture and functionality of future photonic and packet networks are discussed.