Low Cost Long Haul Gigabit Ethernet Alan Cowie

Low Cost, Long Haul Gigabit Ethernet Alan Cowie AARNet Pty Ltd January 2004

Outline ● Opportunity ● Geography/Building Blocks ● Proof of Concept ● Design ● Resource Requirements ● Outcome ● References/URLs

Opportunity ● ● The main campus of the University of New England (UNE) is located in Armidale, Northern NSW. UNE required a replacement for their expensive, ATM based tail link (8 Mbps on E 3) to the AARNet hub in Sydney. Transgrid offered UNE some surplus bandwidth on existing Transgrid infrastructure. AARNet wanted to explore low cost, long haul opportunities.

Geography

330 k. V Tower

The Transgrid Network

Concept ● ● ● Transgrid has long run fibre. AARNet is a Carrier and has network building and operating experience. AARNet and Transgrid formed a partnership to provide bandwidth to UNE. Excess capacity could be sold to other customers. UNE wanted a cost effective IP/ethernet service from Sydney to Armidale.

Building Blocks ● ● TG had installed fibre in the Overhead Earth wire on some sections of their 330 k. V network. The fibre is brought to the ground and terminated only at substations and powerstations. The Armidale to Sydney section had some long fibre runs (>80 km). AARNet was already using Cisco CWDM equipment with very good optical properties.

Building Blocks 2 ● ● The CWDM GBICS support 1. 25 -Gbps fullduplex links with an Optical link budget of better than 30 d. B. Cisco 3550 -12 T Gigabit ethernet Switches. Each supports 10 GBIC interfaces and two copper 10/1000 ports.

Available Fibre A end B end KM Attn d. B Armidale Tamworth 106 24. 18 Tamworth Muswellbrook 130 29. 3 Muswellbrook Liddell 19 4. 96 Liddell Newcastle 104 22. 69 Newcastle Eraring 22 5 Eraring Vales Point 32 7. 6 Vales Point Munmorah 8 2. 29 Munmorah. Sydney North 80 17. 8 Sydney North Sydney West 38 9. 04

Proof of Concept ● ● The Tamworth to Muswellbrook leg was the longest at 130 km with a 29. 3 d. B optical loss. The Po. C was tested on this leg using 1470 nm and 1490 nm CWDM GBICs in borrowed Cisco switches. When tested, the 130 km link came up straight away and ran without error for the duration of the test. Power meter readings showed ample signal. The 1550 nm GBIC were expected to perform better than the 1470 & 1490 nm test optics.

Design ● ● ● Each switch is a OEO signal regenerator and a breakout node. Each switch can support 5 north/south GE paths. No provision for OOB management Customer separation by Qin. Q VLAN stacking Radio last leg until Broadway substation completed

Multiplex Design ● ● ● Initial design supports only 1 Gig. E path due to MUX losses Shorter runs can support CWDM mux Longer runs will need amplification to support CWDM mux

Resource Requirements ● >500 kms of fibre ● 6 x Cisco 3550 -12 T Gigabit ethernet switches ● 12 x Cisco 1000 BASE-CWDM GBIC 1550 nm ● A few UPSs ● Patch leads ● Fibre tails from the TG sites to the end users ● Clue

Outcomes ● ● Lit up >500 km fibre run with Gigabit Ethernet. Six potential customer breakout/access nodes. Total cost for all active/optical gear less than cost of one SDH node. Potential for up to 8 GE paths.

References/URLs ● http: //www. aarnet. edu. au/ ● http: //www. une. edu. au/ ● http: //www. transgrid. com. au/about_us/inset. html ● http: //www. cisco. com/warp/public/cc/so/neso/olso/nesocdwm/cgbic_ov. htm ● ● ● http: //mangrove. nswrno. net. au/dist/public/tgune/unetgnet 2_frame. htm http: //xl. nswrno. net. au/tgune/ Alan Cowie – AARNet Sydney alan. cowie@aarnet. edu. au