Vodafone has successfully completed a live network trial in Spain as part of its work with the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), using the Voyager optical ‘white box.’
The goal of the live trial was to showcase the future of applying a disaggregated model to optical networks and to provide more flexibility to handle the real time dynamics using Voyager, combined with a software-defined network (SDN) controller.
Designed by Facebook and launched toward the end of 2016, Voyager is an open system using combined packet switching and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology for metro and long-haul fibre optical transport networks (see Facebook launches Voyager, the first white box transponder).
For the network trial, it was used with a network operating system from Cumulus Networks, and the NetOS SDN orchestration from Zeetta Networks. With the support of ADVA – one of the architects of the platform – the trial demonstrated how Voyager can be implemented over an existing optical infrastructure, delivering capacity of 800Gb/s per rack unit.
Commenting on the successful demonstration, Santiago Tenorio, Vodafone’s group head of networks strategy and architecture, said: ‘We wanted to show how Voyager's variable-rate transceivers can be used to match speeds and modulation formats with actual line conditions. Thanks to a streamlined network operating system and SDN automation, we showed how our live network can set up optical services and keep them running, reduce unnecessary and lengthy customer service interruptions, and improve network utilisation.’