How OptiX SuperSite Launches High-speed Access into the Digital World

OptiX SuperSite empowers industry and home users with high-speed connectivity through carriers' experience-centric all-optical networks, providing premium private lines for SMEs and optimal E2E experience for home customers.

Enterprise and home broadband services have become new revenue drivers for carriers. In the first three quarters of 2021, the business and home broadband services of China's three major carriers saw double-digit growth, boosting their overall service development.

As enterprises quickly become digitalized, premium optical transmission network (OTN) private lines with low latency, high security, and high reliability have gained popularity among leading enterprise customers. In the first half of 2021, more than 80 carriers worldwide launched OTN enterprise private line products.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) also have strong demand for premium OTN private line services. In China, there are large numbers of high-value business buildings in every province. The tens of thousands of business buildings in Guangdong, for example, house more than 7 million SMEs. As enterprises rapidly migrate to cloud, their private lines needs have evolved from supporting basic access to supporting high-quality and high-bandwidth cloud access.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of home networks, leading to strong growth of home broadband services, which are making up increasingly large shares of carrier revenue. Moreover, homes are transforming from centers for entertainment to centers for both entertainment and work. The home broadband market is shifting its sales focus from bandwidth to experience, as consumers are willing to pay a premium for good experience.

To expand the enterprise market, enhance the home broadband experience, and gain momentum for faster and more sustainable growth in enterprise and home broadband markets, carriers must build experience-centric all-optical networks. The networks must deliver wide and fast high-quality private line coverage for SMEs and ensure end-to-end high-quality home broadband experience, as these factors will underpin their long-term growth.

OptiX SuperSite introduces 3 network upgrades for high-quality private lines

At MWC Shanghai 2021, Huawei launched the OptiX SuperSite solution for global carriers to quickly increase revenue from the enterprise and home broadband markets. Leveraging a range of technological innovations, it’s the industry's first solution to realize the deployment of optical transmission and access networks in the same site. This innovation introduces three "super" upgrades to the network.

Super architecture

Optical fiber is the best medium for the information superhighway. Using optical switching technology based on liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), optical switching capabilities are deployed at the network edge to support Frog Hop architecture (see Figure 1). This enables one-hop service access to the cloud with just 1 ms latency, and connects every enterprise and home through optical networks.

Figure 1: Frog Hop architecture supporting one-hop service access to the cloud

Frog Hop architecture consists of two parts. First, with OptiX SuperSite, the OTN is deployed at the OLT to realize full-service access in one site. Second, all-optical switching is extended from the core network to the MAN and then to the network edge. This realizes end-to-end all-optical switching, while enabling one-site service access at the OptiX SuperSite and one-hop access to the cloud pool, delivering the optimal end-to-end experience.

In addition, Frog Hop architecture can provide differentiated network capabilities for home broadband and enterprise users to support the digitalization of various industries in the F5G and cloud era. The automatic protection provided by the automatically switched optical network (ASON) greatly improves service reliability, creating high-quality cloud-network experience for the digitalization of industries and enabling private cloud access through private networks.

Super experience

OptiX SuperSite can provide high-quality private line access for enterprises and super uplink services for home broadband users, ensuring optimal user experience.

The solution uses Huawei-pioneered OTN P2MP technology (see Figure 2) for the digitalization of massive numbers of SMEs. The solution leverages the existing optical fiber resources of the ODN to realize high-quality private line access through a range of technological innovations:

First, quick provisioning: Existing ODNs can be reused, enabling quick access at the edge, CPE plug-and-play, and time to market (TTM) in days.

Second, uses less optical fiber: One fiber can be used to support 16 enterprises (1:16 optical splitting), reducing the use of optical fiber at the edge by 80%.

Third, high quality: includes the dual-channel isolation of services and pipes, single-site latency less than 200 µs, and ASON automatic recovery.

Fourth, intelligent management: centralized management, quick private line transmission, on-demand bandwidth adjustment, and transparent service level agreement (SLA)

Figure 2: OTN P2MP private line solution

In the home broadband market, more than 30% of experience deterioration derives from the transport network at the uplink of the OLT. Transport networks mostly share pipes, and the best-effort mechanism and complex conversion of different layers of equipment results in inadequate bandwidth, unstable latency, and difficult fault location. These have become unavoidable problems in an era where experience is key when it comes to service operations.

To solve these problems, Huawei introduced the industry's first OLT-based F5G super uplink technology, deploying optical switching capabilities at the edge of the home broadband network and making up for the lack of SLA guarantee at the access layer. In addition, Huawei exclusively launched OLTs with ports that support OTN super uplink. Through this technology, varied SLAs (gold, silver, and bronze levels) can be provided for differentiated services, where, for example, the OTN provides exclusive gold pipes for high-SLA services that deliver millisecond-level experience. Results of verification on live networks show that average user latency is reduced by 50% and zero packet loss is achieved.

Super base

The all-optical base built with the OptiX SuperSite solution makes optical cable resources visible and supports long-term smooth evolution of networks, reducing the TCO of the entire network throughout its lifecycle by more than 50%.

Optical fiber is the physical basis of modern network communications. Since optical fiber works passively (without power supply), real-time transparent management of physical optical network statuses has been impossible. Until now, the massive, "dumb" optical cable resources could only be manually recorded and maintained. Optical network services have well-designed active and standby logical link protection measures, but if the active and standby paths are on the same physical optical cable, there is a greatly increased risk that a fiber cut will result in service interruption.

With the OTN deployed at the OLT, fiber resource transparency will facilitate predictive management, fiber cut detection, and long-term quality analysis. OTN-based same-cable detection can intelligently identify risks of active and standby services on the same cable, greatly improving network reliability and fully unlocking the potential of optical fiber. While the conventional stacked multi-ring scaling solution consumes considerable fiber and equipment resources, the all-optical base built with OptiX SuperSite provides almost unlimited capacity and allows sites to be scaled individually on demand. This enables networks to be reused for two generations.

OptiX SuperSite reduces site costs by simplifying sites. Conventional Ethernet switches and SDH/MSTP equipment are large in size, small in capacity, and consume a high amount of power. The next-generation optical-electrical integrated OTN equipment integrates six capabilities to replace outdated equipment, while reducing the consumption of equipment room resources. Take the practice of a carrier in Guangdong as an example. With the SDH upgraded using OTN, the electricity cost is reduced by 30% and the equipment room space required is reduced by 26%.

OptiX SuperSite provides three full-scenario site solutions: outdoor site, street cabinet, and CO site (see Figure 3), which carriers can flexibly deploy based on actual needs, greatly reducing site construction costs.

The outdoor OptiX SuperSite solution leverages existing wireless site resources and integrates AirPON blade optical access equipment and Edge OTN equipment to provide all-optical integrated service access sites. With these sites, gigabit fiber broadband can be quickly deployed for home users, and premium OTN private lines can be provided for enterprises. Individual, home, and enterprise services within a radius of several kilometers can be carried by the same network. This solution can also be used to build high-speed network access as part of rural digital projects in the new digital era.

Figure 3: Three forms of the OptiX SuperSite solution

High-speed access to the digital world

The digital world is like a collection of cities, and data networks are like roads between cities. Networks that offer high bandwidth, high speed, and low latency, such as 5G and F5G, can be regarded as information freeways. 

Sites built with the OptiX SuperSite solution are like a high-speed entrance to the digital world, enabling SMEs and families to access the data freeway and high-quality services within just 1 ms.