It’s not necessarily metro specific although the metro networks could lend 
themselves to overall optimizations.

The adoption of ZR/ZR+ IPoWDM currently somewhat corresponds with your adoption 
of 400G since today they require a QDD port.   There are 100G QDD ports but 
that’s not all that popular yet.   Of course there is work to do something 
similar in QSFP28 if the power can be reduced to what is supported by an 
existing QSFP28 port in most devices.   In larger networks with higher speed 
requirements and moving to 400G with QDD, using the DCO optics for connecting 
routers is kind of a no-brainer vs. a traditional muxponder.   Whether that’s 
over a ROADM based optical network or not, especially at metro/regional 
distances.

There are very large deployments of IPoDWDM over passive DWDM or dark fiber for 
access and aggregation networks where the aggregate required bandwidth doesn’t 
exceed the capabilities of those optics.  It’s been done at 10G for many years. 
 With the advent of pluggable EDFA amplifiers, you can even build links up to 
120km* (perfect dark fiber)  carrying tens of terabits of traffic without any 
additional active optical equipment.

It’s my personal opinion we aren’t to the days yet of where we can simply build 
an all packet network with no photonic switching that carries all services, but 
eventually (random # of years) it gets there for many networks.  There are also 
always going to be high performance applications for transponders where 
pluggable optics aren’t a good fit.

Carrying high speed private line/wavelength type services as well is a 
different topic than interconnecting IP devices.

Thanks,
Phil


From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+bedard.phil=gmail....@nanog.org> on behalf of 
Etienne-Victor Depasquale via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Monday, May 1, 2023 at 2:30 PM
To: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Routed optical networks
Hello folks,

Simple question: does "routed optical networks" have a clear meaning in the 
metro area context, or not?

Put differently: does it call to mind a well-defined stack of technologies in 
the control and data planes of metro-area networks?

I'm asking because I'm having some thoughts about the clarity of this term, in 
the process of carrying out a qualitative survey of the results of the 
metro-area networks survey.

Cheers,

Etienne

--
Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
Assistant Lecturer
Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
University of Malta
Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale

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