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Juniper emits heavy duty photonic interconnect with a cloudy tinge

Software-defined-networks from photons up to Layer 3

In January 2016, Juniper Networks swallowed BTI Systems with the aim of bringing software defined network approaches to the optical sphere. One of the fruits of that acquisition has now landed, with the company announcing its Open Cloud Interconnect.

Juniper says the new OCI is aimed at inter-data centre connections, with high capacity coherent optical systems, with “open and programmable” routing, switching, security and virtualisation.

The hardware side of the launch is straightforward.

The QFX10000 gets a 1.2 Tbps line card with six 200 Gbps coherent optical ports. The device can support Ethernet VPN, VXLAN and MacSec MAC-level security.

The BTI 7800 gets a transponder that combines 10 10/100 Gbps Ethernet ports, with two coherent 200 Gbps optical ports, and SD-FEC (soft decision forward error correction) support means it can handle long-haul spans of up to 2,000 km.

The proNX Service Manager can now manage coherent optical interfaces on Junipers MX and PTX routers, QFX switches, and BTI packet optical kit. It's also been integrated via YANG with the company's NorthStar Controller.

Juniper's Mark Bieberich blogs that OCI's open APIs give it integration into SDN-based controllers, and provide a control point for everything from the photons to Layer 3.

The system's already been demonstrated interoperating with Microsoft's Open Line system at 150 Gbps and 200 Gbps per wavelength. OCI systems have also been tested for interop with Cisco, and presumably other vendor tests are on the way. ®

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