Ming Xia Ericsson Research Silicon Valley Research Track Session Part 2 ONS2015: http://bit.ly/ons2015sd ONS Inspire! Webinars: http://bit.ly/oiw-sd Watch the talk (video) on ONS Content Archives: http://bit.ly/ons-archives-sd

3. SDN & OPTICAL FLOW STEERING
FOR NETWORK FUNCTION VIRTUALIZATION
Ming Xia, Meral Shirazipour, Ying Zhang,
Howard Green and Attila Takacs
Ericsson Research Silicon Valley
San Jose, CA, United States
ONS 2014 RESEARCH TRACK

4. SDN and Optical Flow Steering | Research Track at 2014 Open Networking Sumit (ONS) | 2014-03-04 | Page 2
› Network Function Virtualization
– Common network functions are realized in software running on
generic hardware and in virtualized environments.
– Motivated by CAPEX savings and faster time to market of new
offerings and solutions.
› Core virtualized network function (vNF)
– Coarse grain (aggregated);
– Large volume (~10Gbps);
– Dynamism (deployment/migration)
› Motivation:
NETWORK FUNCTION VIRTUALIZATION
Packet Optics
Granularity Fine Coarse
Scalability Low High
Power High Low
Flexibility High Low Source: ETSI NFV Whitepaper 2012

5. SDN and Optical Flow Steering | Research Track at 2014 Open Networking Sumit (ONS) | 2014-03-04 | Page 3
SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE
TOR
vNF vNF
OSS/BSS System
SDN Controller
Cloud Management System/
OpenStack
Internet
Operator's DC/Cloud
Operator's Legacy Access Network
Legacy NFs (e.g. middleboxes)
NF
NF
NF
Traffic leaves
aggregation domain
TOR
Optical steering
domain
TOR TOR TOR
vNF vNF vNF
Packet switching
domainAggregation
Router
ROADM
Core Switch
(DC-GW)
P-GW/
BNG
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
Tunable transceiver
WDM link
Link with any single wavelength
Optical coupler
Optical steering domain
WSS 1
WSS 2
WSS 3
In
Out
ToR1
vNF1
ToR2
vNF2
ToR3
vNF3
ToR4
vNF4
• Centralized architecture over
configurable network elements
• ROADM dispatches traffic to optical or
packet domain
• Optical steering domain handles
aggregated traffic flows in wavelength
WSS
Wavelength selective switch

6. SDN and Optical Flow Steering | Research Track at 2014 Open Networking Sumit (ONS) | 2014-03-04 | Page 4
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS
1 2 3 4 5 6
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Coreswitchpacketthroughput(Gbps)
Scenario
Packet switching
SOLuTIoN
1 2 3 4 5 6
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
PowerConsumption(W)
Scenario
Packet switching
SOLuTIoN
Total packet throughput by core switches.
Power consumption for the six scenarios
Scenario Flow rate (Gbps) # of needed
vNFs per flow
1 10 1
2 10 2
3 40 2
4 40 3
5 100 3
6 100 4
Core switch ToR switch Optics
10GbE 3.91 1.3 /
40GbE 15.625 5.21 /
100GbE 46.875 15.63 /
WSS per
port
/
/ 2.0
Scenarios for scalability analysis (2 flows):
Power consumption at different flow rates (W):
Packet switching
Our scheme
Packet switching
Our scheme

7. SDN and Optical Flow Steering | Research Track at 2014 Open Networking Sumit (ONS) | 2014-03-04 | Page 5
› A traffic steering scheme using optics is proposed for NFV
› The scheme offers flexibility to steering coarse-grained
traffic flows with high energy efficiency
› Work in progress
Conclusion
Thank you!
ming.m.xia@ericsson.com