OTN transport over a leaf/spine packet network
AssigneeCiena Corporation
InventorsDaniel Rivaud, Marc Leclair
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A network element (16) includes ingress optics (22) configured to receive a client signal; egress optics (30) configured to transmit packets over one or more Ethernet links (20) in a network (12); circuitry (26, 28) interconnecting the ingress optics (22) and the egress optics (30), wherein the circuitry is configured to segment an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal from the client signal into one or more flows; and provide the one or more flows to the egress optics for transmission over the one or more of Ethernet links (20) to a second network element (18) that is configured to provide the one or more flows into the OTN signal.
Claims20
A network element comprising:
- ingress optics configured to receive a client signal;
- egress optics configured to transmit packets over Ethernet links in a network;
- and
- circuitry interconnecting the ingress optics and the egress optics, wherein the circuitry is configured to
- segment an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal from the client signal into a plurality of mice flows each having bandwidth of about 10 Gb/s or less and having packet sizes of about 64 B or larger, and
- provide the plurality of mice flows to the egress optics for transmission over the Ethernet links to a second network element in the network that is configured to provide the plurality of mice flows to send the OTN signal, wherein at least two of the plurality of mice flows follow different paths in the network while carrying the segmented OTN signal.
An apparatus comprising circuitry configured to
- segment an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal from a client signal into a plurality of mice flows each having bandwidth of about 10 Gb/s or less and having packet sizes of about 64 B or larger, and
- provide the plurality of mice flows to an egress optics for transmission over Ethernet links to a second network element in a network that is configured to provide the plurality of mice flows to send the OTN signal, wherein at least two of the plurality of mice flows follow different paths in the network while carrying the segmented OTN signal.
A method comprising:
- in a network element having ingress optics, egress optics, and circuitry interconnecting the ingress optics and the egress optics, receiving a client signal via the ingress optics;
- segmenting an Optical Transport Network (OTN) signal from the client signal into a plurality of mice flows each having bandwidth of about 10 Gb/s or less and having packet sizes of about 64 B or larger, via the circuitry;
- providing the one or more flows to the egress optics;
- and
- transmitting the plurality of mice flows over Ethernet links to a second network element that is configured to provide the plurality of mice flows to send the OTN signal, wherein at least two of the plurality of mice flows follow different paths in the network while carrying the segmented OTN signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.