E1-E2 CFA PAN Technology Overview, PAN Switches and OCPAN

14 PAN TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW, PAN SWITCHES AND

OCPAN

14.1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 PAN overview
 PAN switches and OCPAN

14.2 INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS PAN?

Packet Aggregation Network (PAN) is designed to work between access and the
core network. PAN switches aggregate voice, video, and data (Any type of traffic STM1,
Ethernet, IP, ATM) from the access network and hands it over to the core (IP-
MPLS/OTN). PAN equipment has high capacity and works in ring topology to provide
protection to the traffic.

PAN is MPLS-TP (Multi Protocol Label switching – Transport Profile) based

Converged Packet Aggregation Network Equipment. It is connection oriented.

Transport networks provide transparent transmission of client data traffic between

connected client devices by establishing and maintaining point-to-point or point-to-
multipoint connections between such devices. The network is basically independent of
any higher-layer network that may exist between clients.

In addition to client traffic, a transport network must carry traffic to facilitate its
own operation that is necessary for connection control, operation, administration, and
maintenance (OAM) functions, network management systems (NMSs), and protection,
just as traditional dedicated circuit-based transport technologies such as synchronous
digital hierarchy (SDH) and optical transport networks (OTNs), have satisfactory grade
capabilities of these functions.

A migration from a legacy network to a new packet transport network is one of

the most serious issues for telecom carriers. The development of packet transport network
technology has been aimed at achieving functionality similar to that of traditional
transport networks achieved by SDH or OTN, which is used to accommodate legacy
services including public switched telephone network (PSTN) lines, private leased lines,
and clock signal paths.

Thus, the packet transport network must efficiently accommodate IP-oriented

services while retaining the existing services by replacing an existing legacy SDH-based
transport network. Another issue in deploying a packet transport network is flexibility in
introducing emerging new technologies such as software defined networking (SDN) and
low cost L3 switch clustering.

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14.3 AGGREGATION NETWORK DEPLOYED IN MPLS BASED

NETWORK PRIOR TO PAN SWITCHES
It consists of multi-gigabit, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) based IP
Network in the form of a 2-layered centrally managed IP backbone network designed to
provide convergent network supporting data, voice and video applications. The network
is envisaged to support the QoS features with four different classes of traffic viz
Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze along with MPLS- Traffic Engineering, Fast Reroute,
multi-casting. This network consists of Core routers (A1, A2, A3 & A4) from different
vendors in different locations.
BSNL has deployed a RPR technology based Aggregation Network in the 98
cities for aggregating the Metro IP Traffic. There are around 1200 RPR based switches
deployed as Metro Aggregation.
BSNL has also deployed a LAN Switch Based Aggregation Network for
aggregating the traffic from the other small cities (OCLAN switches) other than classified
RPR based aggregation is deployed.
There are around 3000 LAN switches deployed in the Network for OC City Aggregation
(OCLAN)
Typical deployment architecture is given below.

Figure 74: Broadband Aggregation Network Architecture Prior to PAN Switches

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14.4 FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT OF THE PAN SWITCHES &

OCPAN
● The PAN switches in the aggregation domain are expected to collect the customer
traffic from access network elements like DSLAM, MSAN or FTTH and hand
over to the IP-MPLS core network.
● The MNG-PAN shall have functionality like ability to create Ethernet Layer 2
VPN such as point to point, point to multipoint as well as multipoint to multipoint
to isolate the customer traffic into their own logical virtual network.
● The switching fabric plane shall be bidirectional and non-blocking. The MNG-
PAN Switch shall support a wire speed L2 switching capabilities under full load
conditions.
● The MNG-PAN switches shall support built in power diagnostics to monitor
optical SFP/XFP ports, system diagnostics hardware failures.
● The equipment shall be Carrier Class with a modular chassis design. By Carrier
class, it is implied that the chassis shall have high availability and redundancy
features, rack mountable and support easy expansion through addition of
tributary cards within the same chassis.
● The aggregation switch shall be architecturally designed such that there is
no single point of failure. For this, the architecture shall provide
'packet switching fabric‘ redundancy.
● The resiliency of the equipment shall be sub 50msec recovery in Ethernet rings for
aggregation layer.
● The solution shall interface to the existing BNG and nationwide MPLS core
network wherever required.
● The MNG-PAN switches shall support point to point, point to multipoint and
multipoint to multipoint traffic in full duplex mode of working.
● The MNG-Pan switches shall be able to function in terminal mode, hub, mesh,
and ring topology.
● The MNG-PAN switches shall provide managed multi-service integration viz
voice, video, and data.

14.5 DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE OF PAN SWITCHES

BSNL deployed MNG-PAN Aggregation Network in the 15 cities

• 421 PAN-COAU & PAN

• 287 OC PAN

The deployment of the MNG-PAN switch in the network shall be as below:

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Figure 75: Deployment Architecture of PAN Switches and OC-PAN

*PAN – COAU: Packet Aggregation Network – Central Office Aggregation Unit

switch: for connecting to BNG or to MPLS routers

*OC-PAN – Other City Packet Aggregation Network switch

The OC-PAN ring will aggregate the traffic from all nodes and hand over the
traffic to the upper MNG-PAN ring. The Central Office Aggregation Unit (COAU)
switch of the PAN ring will aggregate the traffic from all the PAN nodes and hand over
the traffic to the IP-MPLS core.
The network shall support internetworking between the MPLS-TP and IP/MPLS
domains by any of the solutions
● MPLS-TP Termination - service termination at the edge of each domain and
traffic hand over UNI.
● MPLS-TP is a carried over IP-MPLS: service /Tunnel not terminated at the hand-
off point, hand-off to core over S-VLAN tunnels or using GRE tunnels
● The equipment shall support the bridging functionality between MPLS-TP and
IP/MPLS domains.

14.6 FEATURES OF PAN NETWORK

1. The solution is based on Pseudo Wire over MPLS-TP technology that
supports an efficient Ethernet aggregation.
2. The PAN platform offers wide range of protocols, standards and interfaces
coupled with highest reliability

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3. Carrier-class set of features, including the carrier class sub 50ms recovery
resiliency,
4. Hard QoS/SLA guarantees,
5. End to end and multi-layer OAM, network-wide time/clock synchronization,
6. Efficient multicast data distribution.
7. Range of interfaces up to 10GE
8. Low power consumption
9. Centralized management

14.7 ADVANTAGES OF PAN TRANSPORT NETWORK

Scalability: Support of electrical and optical Ethernet interfaces from FE to 10GE. Large
switching capacity.

Reliability: Carrier class reliability with fully redundant hardware architecture.

Resilience: Various protection schemes, sub-50ms failure recovery.

Manageability: Enhanced OAM capability with end-to-end service management. NMS-

based operation.

Inter-operability: Compliant with ITU-T MPLS-TP standard. Easy integration with core
IP/MPLS or OTN networks.

Bandwidth Efficiency: Packet nature of the network with flexible data-pipes enables
users to request the service in smaller increments and provides better utilization at the
aggregation level.

Lower TCO: Low power consumption; bandwidth efficiency due to optimized packet
aggregation; fast fault isolation and simple management; smaller form factor.

14.8 PAN SWITCHES AND OCPAN

PAN switches deployed for MNG-PAN of M/s FiberHome are as given below:

• PAN-COAU ：CiTRANS 660

• PAN ： CiTRANS 660

• OC-PAN ：CiTRANS 650

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PAN network is used to replace the existing RPR aggregation network

● T1 switches by PAN COAU ( CiTRANS 660)

● T2 switches by PAN switch (CiTRANS 660)
● OC-LAN switches by OC PAN (CiTRANS 650 U3)
14.8.1 Pan Coau & Pan Switch (Citrans 660)
Max interface capability

Switch Interface type

capacity

10GE GE FE STM-1 E1

160 Gbps 14 120 168 120 224

320 Gbps 30 140 168 128 224

a. COAU-PAN

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b. PAN

2. OC-PAN

Max interface capability

Interface type

10GE GE FE STM-1 E1

10 80 80 40 320

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14.9 CONCLUSION
The PAN and OC-PAN switches shall collect the customer traffic like voice,
video and data being generated through different access Broadband networks such as
DSL, FTTH, MSAN, 3G Node B, Wi-Max etc and hand over to IP-MPLS core network.

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