Method for Separation of Packet NetworkManagement Domains

• US 20080025722A1
• Filed: 09/18/2007
• Published: 01/31/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/01/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gerstel, Ornan
• Granted Patent: US 7,924,746 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 398/51
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 14/0256 at the optical channel layer
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 14/0267 Optical signaling or routing
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 14/0275 using an optical service channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0806 for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/147 for predicting network behaviour
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0823 Errors, e.g. transmission errors

Abstract

The present invention provides a mechanism and a method for indirectly controlling a packet handling device interface from an optical management system in an packet-optical network. A mechanism is provided for controlling a packet handling device, such as a router, interface from a management system indirectly, by using optical equipment as a proxy and communicating between the optical gear and router via a peer-to-peer signaling protocol. The present invention provides a management method that allows separate management systems for the optical layer and the packet network layer and a method for managing the network across the domains.

Claims

1. In a packet-optical network having packet network domain and an optical domain including at least one optical networking element (ONE) coupled to and managed by a network operations center (NOC), the ONE comprising:

a logical interface, coupled to the NOC, the logical interface adapted to translate a request from the NOC to configure a device in the IP domain, the device in the IP domain having a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical interface for receiving and transmitting optical wavelengths, the optical interface coupled to the ONE; and

a communication path for exchanging peer-to-peer signaling between the device in the IP domain and the NOC to provision the WDM optical interface, wherein the communication path includes a protocol selected from the group comprising eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and SNMP.

2. In packet-optical network having at least packet network domain with at least one infrastructure device that is capable of converting optical signals to packet network signals and packet network signals to optical signals, and an optical domain, a mechanism for reporting soft errors and performance monitoring in the optical domain comprising:

an optical network element having a first virtual interface, associated with the optical network element, to translate optical layer management protocol into requests transmitted to the infrastructure device and a second virtual interface, associated with the optical network element, to translate responses to the requests from the infrastructure device to the optical layer management protocol.

3. The packet-optical network of claim 2 further comprising:

a logical layer, associated with the first and second virtual interface, the logical layer adapted to reconfigure the infrastructure device in the packet network domain based on commands received from the optical domain.

4. The packet-optical network of claim 2 wherein said one infrastructure device is capable of converting optical signals to IP signals and IP signals to optical signals.

5. A method for managing the optical domain in a network having an packet network domain and an optical domain, the method comprising:

sending a command to a logical interface associated with an optical network device;

translating the command into a provisioning message;

negotiating a configuration of an optical interface associated with a device in the packet network domain from a management operations center in the optical domain; and

accepting changes to the provisioning of the device in the packet network domain.

6. In a packet-optical network, a packet network device comprising a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) interface coupled to an optical network device wherein the DWDM interface is configured by requests received from a virtual transponder associated with an optical network operations center.

7. The infrastructure of claim 6, wherein the network packet device is an Ethernet switch.

8. The infrastructure of claim 6, wherein the packet network device is a Provider Bridge Transport device.

9. In a packet-optical network having a packet network domain and an optical domain, a system for managing a device in the packet network domain from the optical domain, the system comprising

an optical networking element (ONE)

a network operations center (NOC) coupled to the ONE;

a network edge device having a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) interface coupled to the ONE, wherein the network edge device comprises a device selected from the group comprising a router, an Ethernet switch and a Provider Bridge Transport device; and

a virtual transponder associated with the ONE wherein the DWDM interface is configured by requests generated by the NOC and translated into negotiated requests to indirectly control the DWDM interface.

10. The system of claim 9 further comprising a communication band between the ONE and the packet network device wherein requests are transmitted over the communication band via a peer-to-peer signaling protocol comprising a protocol selected from the group comprising LMP, XML and SNMP.