Circuit performance in a packet network: Demonstrating integrated Carrier Ethernet Switch Router (CESR) + Optical Transport Network (OTN)

Circuit switched systems in the metropolitan and core networks are being steadily replaced by the packet optical integration brought about by the steady advances in Carrier Ethernet, Optical Transport Network (OTN) and Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (ROADM). We demonstrate a state-of-the-art Carrier Ethernet Switch Router (CESR) with integrated OTN function as a mechanism to better facilitate packet-optical integration leading to service and layer 2.5 routing support. The design, development of this CESR+OTN platform is described. The test-bed showcases an integrated high-speed optical network configured as an inter-connected ring topology of 16 nodes, multi-degree cross-connects and demonstrates next generation application services used for cloud computing and mobile backhaul. Performance results indicate that the packet optical technology proposed by us and showcased in a live test-bed compare similar to (or in some cases better than) a circuit switched network.