Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON)

1 Quick View

5 Electrical-Layer ASON

3 Control Plane
The control plane complies with LMP, OSPF, and RSVP-TE protocols.

ASON introduces GMPLS control plane to achieve dynamic connection management, automatic
discovery, protection & restoration, and CAPEX & OPEX reduction.

Neighbor discovery, fault location & link

resource management

NMS
NMI

Automatic building, deleting &

maintenance of connections

Service trail calculation request

NMS
Control channel
Configuration

1. Neighbor discovery

NMI
Control
Plane

Allocation & collection of routing resources

VC

Traditional network
Management
Plane

OSPF, routing protocol

RSVP-TE, signaling protocol

Fault locating information

Control link information

ASON
Management
Plane

Service link information

LMP, link management protocol

There two types of electrical-layer ASON: OTN ASON and SDH ASON. Electrical-layer ASON is based on optical-layer server
trails. The OTUk link or VC link may be inconsistent with the physical topology.
OTN ASON can be easily deployed on standard OTN networks to improve the network reliability.
STM-n TE LINK
OTUk TE LINK

GMPLS

OCC

OCC

LMP

OCC
OCC

ODU

4. Rerouting

VC

TDM
Tributary card

2 Calculate an E2E trail according to topology

2 Path

1 Notify

1 Notify

RSVP-TE

2 hTea
Pat

h
Pat

h
Pat

v
Res

v
Res

E-NNI

3
4

UNI

4 Path

VC4-n

VC

Diamond service
Failure

Permanent 1+1
When an LSP of a diamond service fails, the service switches to the
protection LSP and then the faulty LSP is rerouted.

1+1 rerouting
When an LSP fails, the service
switches to the other LSP. The
other LSP is rerouted upon
another failure.

Failure

The optical-layer ASON, which is also known as WSON, is

based on flexible ROADM with the using of WSS
technologies to implement colorless , directionless and
contentionless applications.

VC
SDH card

1+1 non-rerouting
No rerouting is performed even when both LSPs fail. Its the same
as traditional 1+1 protection.

Tunable laser/receiver
Wavelengths can be
adjusted freely
Failure

The LSP is rerouted when it

fails.

Acronyms

Diamond service (Permanent 1+1)

Diamond service (1+1 rerouting)

Bank, security service

Bank, security service

SNCP
Rerouting
Flex P&R
Permanent protection

Protection & restoration

OSNR

nm

Service level comparison

Key characteristics

Both supported

SNCP
Rerouting
Flex P&R

Silver service
IP private line, internet service
Rerouting
Flex P&R

Protection for the first failure

and dynamic restoration for
the other failures

Dynamic restoration

Both supported

Restoration supported only

Ack Acknowledgement
APP Application
ASON Automatically Switched Optical Network
CCI Connect and Control Interface
CD Chromatic Dispersion
CP Control Plane
E2E End-to-End
E-NNI External-Network Network Interface
FIU Fiber Interface Unit
FWM Four-wave Mixing
GMPLS Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching

A wavelength can be
transmitted to any
direction.

Copper service

No protection. The
interrupted services
cannot be restored.
N/A

LMP Link Management Protocol

LSP Label Switched Path
NBI Northbound Interface
NMI Network Management Interface
NMS Network Management System
OCC Optical Connection Control
ODUk Optical Channel Data Unit-k
OSNR Optical Signal-to-Noise Ratio
OSPF Open Shortest Path First
OTN Optical Transport Network
OTUk Optical Channel Transport Unit-k

Centralized
control
Server

NMS

Gridless

NMS

Extra penalty

Gridless bandwidth:
n x one slice (n=4, 5, 6...),
12.5 GHz per slice

The same wavelength

can be transmitted to any
direction from any port.

Build mathematics
model and
calculation

SDH card

Route creation request

Client and APP layer

PKT/SDH

Domain A

Performance unbalance is supervised and reported.

Optical performance monitor unit

CD

E2E
signaling

Control plane

Domain C

NMS

One
control
plane

Required

Margin
Distance

Obtain the best route by considering the traffic engineering,

wavelength restriction, and OSNR margin.

P&R Protection and Restoration

PC Permanent Connection
PCE Path Computation Element
PCEP Path Computation Element Protocol
PKT Packet
PMD Polarization Mode Dispersion
Resv Resource Reservation
ROADM Reconfiguration Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer
RSVP-TE Resource Reservation Protocol-Traffic Engineering
SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
SLA Service Level Agreement

OSNR/Power

Before

OSNR/Power

After

SNCP Subnetwork Connection Protection

SPC Soft Permanent Connection
SPM Self Phase Modulation
TDM Time Division Multiplexing
TE Traffic Engineering
T-SDN Transport Software-Defined Networking
UNI User Network Interface
VC Virtual Container
WDM Wavelength Division Multiplexing
WSON Wavelength Switched Optical Network
WSS Wavelength Selective Switching
XPM Cross-phase Modulation

Network operation
system
Control layer

WDM
Physical
plane

non-GMPLS
Physical layer

Domain B

GMPLS

7 Standards
ITU-T

Optical power adjustment unit

Optical power is automatically adjusted to guarantee the
best performance.

NBI
Transport controller
Network service
system

PCEP/Openflow+

Wavelengths carrying different gridless

bandwidth can be transmitted to any directions.

Attenuation

OSNR
Receiving

VC4-n

Improve flexible configuration and

auto-operation capability of the entire
GMPLS and non-GMPLS network.

Centralized
control
Server

100 Gbit/s 400 Gbit/s 1 Tbit/s

Automatic adjustment of performance

Nonlinear: SPM XPM FWM

VC

Evolution Toward T-SDN

Temporary service
N/A

PMD

TDM
Tributary card

VC
SDH card

Multi-layer Control Plane

Restoration: local repair + E2E restoration;

suited for single vendor network
interoperability; online planning and healthy
diagnose.

Photonic switch (ROADM)

Contentionless

Impairment aware routing

dB

Technology

Failure

Silver service

Suggested service type

Transport plane

Multi-domain Interactions

Control plane

OTN

Service Level

Management plane

Flexible ROADM

Directionless

VC4-n

Line card

VC
SDH card

STM-n TE LINK

Optimal path calculation

Similar to that in single domain

Colorless

VC

6 T-SDN

In addition, the gridless ROADM is introduced to achieve the

flexible distribution and efficient use of spectrum bandwidth
for the next generation 400G/1T per channel services.

F
I
U

ODU

SDH card

3
PathTear

4 Optical-Layer ASON

The ASON can transport services of different SLAs based on customers requirements. The SLA divides services into various
levels according to the service protection capability.

F
I
U

VC

Line card

F
I
U

OTUk ODUk

VC
SDH card

5 Resv

2 SLA Services

F
I
U

ODUk OTUk
Line card

n Step No.

5 Resv

OTUk ODUk

Electrical

CCI

5. Revertion

Electrical

1 Calculate an E2E trail according to topology

ODUk
OTN
Tributary card

Optical

3. LSP building

VC

Line card

ODUk OTUk
Line card

LSA

VC4-n

Transport
Plane CCI

VC

Optical

Transport
Plane

OTN
Tributary card

OSPF

TE link
Link summary
Ack

E-NNI

OTUk ODUk

F
I
U

ODUk

Hello

Ack

OCC

UNI control

OSPF

DB link
Test

LMP

F
I
U

Line card

2. Topology discovery

Ack

ODUk OTUk

Standards related to ASON architecture and

requirements are defined by ITU-T.
IETF
Standards related to GMPLS, such as LMP,
OSPF-TE and RSVP-TE, are defined by IETF.

G .8080
G .7714
G .7716

ASON Architecture
Automatic discovery
Control plane operations

RFC 3945 GMPLS framework

RFC 3200 RSVP-TE
RFC 3471/RFC 3473 RSVP-TE for GMPLS
RFC 3477 Unnumbered link
RFC 3630 OSPF-TE
RFC 4202 Routing extension for GMPLS
RFC 4203 OSPF extension for GMPLS
RFC 4204 LMP
RFC 4207 LMP extension for SDH
RFC 4328 GMPLS extension for OTN
RFC 4606 GMPLS extension for SDH

ITU-T Standards
G .7712 DCN
G .7713
G .7715 Routing
G .7718 ASON management
IETF Standards
RFC 4655
RFC 4872
RFC 4920
RFC 5088
RFC 5440
RFC 5493
RFC 5557
RFC 6163
RFC 6205
RFC 6566
RFC 7025

Huaweis OTN Products (ASON supported)

OptiX OSN 8800
Universal platform
OptiX OSN 6800
subrack

T16

T32

T64

Signaling

PCE Architecture
E2E P&R
Crankback extension for RSVP-TE
OSPF PCE Discovery
PCEP
Requirements for the conversion between PC & SPC
Global concurrent optimization
WSON Framework
Generalized labels for lambda-switch
WSON framework with impairments
Requirements for GMPLS Applications of PCE

OptiX OSN 9800

U32
U64