Optical Networks: A New Stage of Internet Development
Optical fiber data transmission technology has long gained popularity all over the world, including in Russia. First of all, thanks to high speed and reliability. Nevertheless, Russia is still far behind the developed countries of Southeast Asia in terms of the distribution of fiber-optic networks. So far, such networks can most often be found in Moscow and the largest cities, while in the regions they are just beginning to appear.
A number of such projects are carried out with the participation of Huawei as a manufacturer of an almost complete line of active network equipment. According to Shavkat Abdurazakov, manager of Huawei’s network solutions department in Russia, the company does business in three areas: solutions for the operator market, corporate customers and end users (mobile devices).
Most of the fiber optic equipment is designed for major telecommunications service providers (MTS, Beeline, Tele2, Megafon, Rostelecom, Transtelecom, ER-Telecom, and many others). However, owning your own fiber channel is by no means a prerequisite for implementing your own network infrastructure. For example, small customers can rent a wavelength from the main telecom operator. The fact is that operators can sell not only a separate section of glass optical cable, but also one wavelength out of several dozen available to it. In addition, the option of selling the wavelength simultaneously with several network services is possible.
Wholesale and Retail
From a practical point of view, as Shavkat Abdurazakov notes, it is most advantageous for the operator to sell services, since the opportunity to profit from them is much higher than from a physical optical cable or wavelength. “By purchasing high-bandwidth equipment, you can sell large amounts of Gigabit services, while fiber can be sold only once,” he explains.
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Services are usually acquired by small companies that are impractical and unprofitable to build their own networks. For example, this may be a small bank that needs to deploy a 10 Gbit / s bandwidth channel between data centers in different cities. It will not purchase a cable, since the capacity incorporated in the price of this cable far exceeds its needs. At the same time, if the customer expects serious volumes of traffic (one pair of fibers can now transmit up to 16 Tbit / s), laying your own channel or buying it will be the best and most reliable solution.
Not competition, but complementarity
Other network technologies, such as radio relay and copper cable connections, while not competing with optical fiber, have a number of advantages over it. This is, above all, the ability to deploy spans where it is physically impossible or too difficult to lay optical fiber in administrative terms. Examples include laying a cable under a railway bed, highway or military facility. In this case, radio relay spans that can cover up to 70 km come to the rescue. Such a span is capable of transmitting at speeds up to gigabits per second. “Thus, it can be said that in no case does optical fiber and radio-relay communication compete, but complement each other,” says Shavkat Abdurazakov.
Copper cable, in contrast to radio relay communication, is used on the “last mile” and, thanks to modern technologies, can provide data rates of up to 500 Mbit - 1 Gbit / s with a small distance from the central hub - 100–200 m. By modern standards, this is quite a bit since GPON technology, based, as is well known, on optical fiber, provides transmission speeds up to 2.5 Gbit / s in download mode and up to 1 Gbit / s in upload mode at distances up to 10 km from the central hub. And this is far from the limit, since the next generation equipment that supports the 10G-PON standard is already capable of providing speeds of 4–10 times higher. Such equipment is already used in China, South Korea and other countries of Southeast Asia. “For several years, wherever the last mile needs a high data transfer rate, fiber optic standards will sooner or later completely replace the copper cable,” says Mr. Abdurazakov. According to him, 10G-PON is already being tested by operators in neighboring Belarus.
The next stage in the development of the fiber optic standard for the “last mile” should be WDM-PON, which will allow transmitting data at speeds from 40 to 100 Gbps. In practice, this means that a 4K movie can be downloaded in just a few seconds.
In the morning connection - in the evening services
Are the operators and providers themselves interested in changing their “last mile” infrastructure? The manager of Huawei's network solutions department in Russia, Shavkat Abdurazakov, believes that if the majority of customers need high connection speeds, the operators will not have another way. The engine of such interest, of course, is the availability of appropriate multimedia content. For example, Netflix, which recently announced its entry into the Russian market, broadcasts 4K movies at a speed of 15 Mbit / s, and speeds up to 100 Mbit / s are required to get a full 4K. With the help of copper cable to provide such speeds over large areas is impossible.
By cable and by air
But not only wired network technologies increase data transfer rates. In parallel, develop and wireless. In the coming years, we will see a massive distribution of 4.5G and 5G networks. 5G speeds imply up to 1 Gbit / s per user, which will allow watching video with 4K resolution. However, they will not constitute direct competition with fiber-optic technologies, since wired networks are always static and provide connectivity to homes, offices, etc., while mobile data transmission is aimed at constantly moving users.
In addition, as Mr. Abdurazakov emphasizes, the wireless Internet has one peculiarity - it almost never comes absolutely without any restrictions. The carrier always limits either the speed or the amount of traffic consumed. This is done not from greed, but from the need to comply with the laws of physics, because if one or several users maximally occupy the whole channel, the rest of the mobile Internet will simply be unavailable. Therefore, in static conditions, especially when it comes to the consumption of bulk content, the mobile Internet will never replace the wired one.
Abdurazakov also recalled that 5G networks are designed for new types of services that require low latency. For example, “smart cars”, the prototypes of which are actively developed and tested by many companies today. Such cars are connected to cellular networks, but now, at a speed of 120 km / h and with a connection delay of 50–100 milliseconds (in 3G / 4G networks), the car manages to travel several meters, which does not yet comply with safety requirements. Reducing the delay time to 1 ms with the advent of the 5G standard brings with it a new incentive for the development of smart devices and the Internet of Things.
Towards Universal Access
However, all the advantages that high-speed fiber-optic networks carry have one deterrent factor — the relative high cost of their deployment, which, in turn, leads to digital inequality within the state. Densely populated million-plus cities with a fairly large user audience and profitability are more interesting to operators than remote and especially sparsely populated and hard-to-reach settlements. For example, in the United States, as of 2012, transport networks totaled about 2 million km of optical cable, and in Russia - less than 700 thousand km. Over 3 years, the networks have been significantly expanded, and now in Russia their length is more than 1 million km, but, given the vast territory of our country, this is not enough.
However, according to Shavkat Abdurazakov, the situation in Russia is already changing for the better. So, at the end of 2014, Rostelecom, with the help of Huawei, implemented a project to build a fiber-optic network to Salekhard, where a radio relay channel had been used before. Today, Salekhard is connected via a pair of fiber, providing data transfer rates of up to 8 Tbit / s. Another equally interesting joint project of Rostelecom and Huawei, which is still under implementation, is the underwater installation of an optical cable along the Sakhalin-Magadan-Kamchatka route. By the end of this year, work is planned to be completed, after which high-speed Internet will come to these hard-to-reach regions.
Huawei implements similar projects around the world, working with both operators and any other companies. For example, in the UAE, the leading telecom operator in the Middle East, Etisalat, based on Huawei equipment, has deployed one of the largest GPON networks in the region . Thanks to the deployment of the GPON network, the large Indian hotel chain Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces (TAJ) was able to build a single platform for implementing the “smart hotel” functions, while the Chinese TV company Guangzhou Digital, using Huawei’s D-CMTS solution, built bilateral coverage of all urban areas in Guangzhou to provide a full range of cross-platform information services .
But even in those regions where the speeds provided by the fiber-optic connection are already available, they are not always in demand by users, who often do not know that a wide range of high-speed Internet services are already available in their locality. This requires educational work on the part of the operators, who need not only to install the equipment, but also to show and tell about its capabilities. Huawei is actively educating young people, working with many educational institutions in the world, including the leading Russian universities. One of the key aspects of such training is to unleash the potential of the latest network technologies and the capabilities of modern network equipment. “We hope that young people, having the opportunity to work not only in large industrial centers, but also in the regions, will return to their native places and develop ICT services in them,” says Mr. Abdurazakov.
The spread of fiber-optic networks is also promoted by the ongoing process of cheaper production of the fiber itself, as well as the improvement of its characteristics. The G.652d standard, which is used all over the world today, shows 0.3 dB / km in terms of losses, while Corning, the leading manufacturer of optical fibers, today produces cable with an even lower loss level - 0.16 dB / km. “The main part of the cost is not the cost of the fiber itself, but the cost of laying the cable,” explains Shavkat Abdurazakov. - So, Salekhard had to stretch the cable in permafrost, and in Kamchatka and Sakhalin - along the bottom of the ocean. In addition, the metal cable, the hydrophobic impregnation and the sheath protecting the fiber are much more expensive than the fiber itself. ”
Thus, the cheapening of manufacturing technologies, along with the availability of content and state initiatives, should be another driving factor in the spread of fiber optic networks in Russia and reducing the backlog of our country from the leading world powers.
If you have any questions about Huawei products and solutions, you can contact the experts for advice.
A number of such projects are carried out with the participation of Huawei as a manufacturer of an almost complete line of active network equipment. According to Shavkat Abdurazakov, manager of Huawei’s network solutions department in Russia, the company does business in three areas: solutions for the operator market, corporate customers and end users (mobile devices).
Most of the fiber optic equipment is designed for major telecommunications service providers (MTS, Beeline, Tele2, Megafon, Rostelecom, Transtelecom, ER-Telecom, and many others). However, owning your own fiber channel is by no means a prerequisite for implementing your own network infrastructure. For example, small customers can rent a wavelength from the main telecom operator. The fact is that operators can sell not only a separate section of glass optical cable, but also one wavelength out of several dozen available to it. In addition, the option of selling the wavelength simultaneously with several network services is possible.
Wholesale and Retail
From a practical point of view, as Shavkat Abdurazakov notes, it is most advantageous for the operator to sell services, since the opportunity to profit from them is much higher than from a physical optical cable or wavelength. “By purchasing high-bandwidth equipment, you can sell large amounts of Gigabit services, while fiber can be sold only once,” he explains.
')
Services are usually acquired by small companies that are impractical and unprofitable to build their own networks. For example, this may be a small bank that needs to deploy a 10 Gbit / s bandwidth channel between data centers in different cities. It will not purchase a cable, since the capacity incorporated in the price of this cable far exceeds its needs. At the same time, if the customer expects serious volumes of traffic (one pair of fibers can now transmit up to 16 Tbit / s), laying your own channel or buying it will be the best and most reliable solution.
Not competition, but complementarity
Other network technologies, such as radio relay and copper cable connections, while not competing with optical fiber, have a number of advantages over it. This is, above all, the ability to deploy spans where it is physically impossible or too difficult to lay optical fiber in administrative terms. Examples include laying a cable under a railway bed, highway or military facility. In this case, radio relay spans that can cover up to 70 km come to the rescue. Such a span is capable of transmitting at speeds up to gigabits per second. “Thus, it can be said that in no case does optical fiber and radio-relay communication compete, but complement each other,” says Shavkat Abdurazakov.
Copper cable, in contrast to radio relay communication, is used on the “last mile” and, thanks to modern technologies, can provide data rates of up to 500 Mbit - 1 Gbit / s with a small distance from the central hub - 100–200 m. By modern standards, this is quite a bit since GPON technology, based, as is well known, on optical fiber, provides transmission speeds up to 2.5 Gbit / s in download mode and up to 1 Gbit / s in upload mode at distances up to 10 km from the central hub. And this is far from the limit, since the next generation equipment that supports the 10G-PON standard is already capable of providing speeds of 4–10 times higher. Such equipment is already used in China, South Korea and other countries of Southeast Asia. “For several years, wherever the last mile needs a high data transfer rate, fiber optic standards will sooner or later completely replace the copper cable,” says Mr. Abdurazakov. According to him, 10G-PON is already being tested by operators in neighboring Belarus.
The next stage in the development of the fiber optic standard for the “last mile” should be WDM-PON, which will allow transmitting data at speeds from 40 to 100 Gbps. In practice, this means that a 4K movie can be downloaded in just a few seconds.
In the morning connection - in the evening services
Are the operators and providers themselves interested in changing their “last mile” infrastructure? The manager of Huawei's network solutions department in Russia, Shavkat Abdurazakov, believes that if the majority of customers need high connection speeds, the operators will not have another way. The engine of such interest, of course, is the availability of appropriate multimedia content. For example, Netflix, which recently announced its entry into the Russian market, broadcasts 4K movies at a speed of 15 Mbit / s, and speeds up to 100 Mbit / s are required to get a full 4K. With the help of copper cable to provide such speeds over large areas is impossible.
By cable and by air
But not only wired network technologies increase data transfer rates. In parallel, develop and wireless. In the coming years, we will see a massive distribution of 4.5G and 5G networks. 5G speeds imply up to 1 Gbit / s per user, which will allow watching video with 4K resolution. However, they will not constitute direct competition with fiber-optic technologies, since wired networks are always static and provide connectivity to homes, offices, etc., while mobile data transmission is aimed at constantly moving users.
In addition, as Mr. Abdurazakov emphasizes, the wireless Internet has one peculiarity - it almost never comes absolutely without any restrictions. The carrier always limits either the speed or the amount of traffic consumed. This is done not from greed, but from the need to comply with the laws of physics, because if one or several users maximally occupy the whole channel, the rest of the mobile Internet will simply be unavailable. Therefore, in static conditions, especially when it comes to the consumption of bulk content, the mobile Internet will never replace the wired one.
Abdurazakov also recalled that 5G networks are designed for new types of services that require low latency. For example, “smart cars”, the prototypes of which are actively developed and tested by many companies today. Such cars are connected to cellular networks, but now, at a speed of 120 km / h and with a connection delay of 50–100 milliseconds (in 3G / 4G networks), the car manages to travel several meters, which does not yet comply with safety requirements. Reducing the delay time to 1 ms with the advent of the 5G standard brings with it a new incentive for the development of smart devices and the Internet of Things.
Towards Universal Access
However, all the advantages that high-speed fiber-optic networks carry have one deterrent factor — the relative high cost of their deployment, which, in turn, leads to digital inequality within the state. Densely populated million-plus cities with a fairly large user audience and profitability are more interesting to operators than remote and especially sparsely populated and hard-to-reach settlements. For example, in the United States, as of 2012, transport networks totaled about 2 million km of optical cable, and in Russia - less than 700 thousand km. Over 3 years, the networks have been significantly expanded, and now in Russia their length is more than 1 million km, but, given the vast territory of our country, this is not enough.
However, according to Shavkat Abdurazakov, the situation in Russia is already changing for the better. So, at the end of 2014, Rostelecom, with the help of Huawei, implemented a project to build a fiber-optic network to Salekhard, where a radio relay channel had been used before. Today, Salekhard is connected via a pair of fiber, providing data transfer rates of up to 8 Tbit / s. Another equally interesting joint project of Rostelecom and Huawei, which is still under implementation, is the underwater installation of an optical cable along the Sakhalin-Magadan-Kamchatka route. By the end of this year, work is planned to be completed, after which high-speed Internet will come to these hard-to-reach regions.
Huawei implements similar projects around the world, working with both operators and any other companies. For example, in the UAE, the leading telecom operator in the Middle East, Etisalat, based on Huawei equipment, has deployed one of the largest GPON networks in the region . Thanks to the deployment of the GPON network, the large Indian hotel chain Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces (TAJ) was able to build a single platform for implementing the “smart hotel” functions, while the Chinese TV company Guangzhou Digital, using Huawei’s D-CMTS solution, built bilateral coverage of all urban areas in Guangzhou to provide a full range of cross-platform information services .
But even in those regions where the speeds provided by the fiber-optic connection are already available, they are not always in demand by users, who often do not know that a wide range of high-speed Internet services are already available in their locality. This requires educational work on the part of the operators, who need not only to install the equipment, but also to show and tell about its capabilities. Huawei is actively educating young people, working with many educational institutions in the world, including the leading Russian universities. One of the key aspects of such training is to unleash the potential of the latest network technologies and the capabilities of modern network equipment. “We hope that young people, having the opportunity to work not only in large industrial centers, but also in the regions, will return to their native places and develop ICT services in them,” says Mr. Abdurazakov.
The spread of fiber-optic networks is also promoted by the ongoing process of cheaper production of the fiber itself, as well as the improvement of its characteristics. The G.652d standard, which is used all over the world today, shows 0.3 dB / km in terms of losses, while Corning, the leading manufacturer of optical fibers, today produces cable with an even lower loss level - 0.16 dB / km. “The main part of the cost is not the cost of the fiber itself, but the cost of laying the cable,” explains Shavkat Abdurazakov. - So, Salekhard had to stretch the cable in permafrost, and in Kamchatka and Sakhalin - along the bottom of the ocean. In addition, the metal cable, the hydrophobic impregnation and the sheath protecting the fiber are much more expensive than the fiber itself. ”
Thus, the cheapening of manufacturing technologies, along with the availability of content and state initiatives, should be another driving factor in the spread of fiber optic networks in Russia and reducing the backlog of our country from the leading world powers.
If you have any questions about Huawei products and solutions, you can contact the experts for advice.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/301620/
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