Tom, Le 29/05/2019 à 16:20, Tom Hill a écrit :
Very clear. If you do find this veritable moon-on-a-stick device, please do let me know.
I will. But I don't think it's for the lack of devices : every OCP switch based on Broadcom's StrataDNX ASICs seems technicaly capable of handling OTN, they even allow for a 250ns port-to-port fastpath for OTN bridges if I got the datasheets right. It's the software that's missing.
Asking PacketLight to fix their software might not be a bad start,
Well, I learned today that these boxes may be manufactured by Nokia, who also sell them under their brand as "WaveLite Metro 200", packed with another software. I'm waiting for the manuals to assess their feature-set.
or perhaps asking their competition if they can do better (see Infinera, Coriant, Adva, Ciena, etc.)
I'm already running Coriants and… well… $8k per 100G port is simply unacceptable. That's the price for a 6*100G+48*10G OCP switch with the right ASIC. Also their software is a mess. I mean, it's 2019, we can't build networks like 20 years ago. Automation is mandatory. And we lack so many network engineers on the market, running a linux-based network would let us recruit and train sysadmins instead. Running their windows-only TNMS really hurts my teams' morale. ECI seems to have a nice lineup with Apollo (9904x) and Neptune ranges, I'm waiting for pricing. But if I had to choose, running Cumulus Linux (or equivalent) with OTN+MEF extensions (also SRv6 to build a terastream-like network) on broadcom-based OCP switches would be far more efficient and versatile. Best regards, -- Jérôme Nicolle +33 6 19 31 27 14