Carrier Ethernet 2.0 Service Delivery Case Study: Telstra s Ethernet Services Powered by MRV

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1 White Paper Carrier Ethernet 2.0 Service Delivery Case Study: Telstra s Ethernet Services Powered by MRV Prepared by Heavy Reading on behalf of March 2014

2 Introduction Telstra is Australia s leading provider of business, wholesale, and mobile communications services as well as a major provider of international data and managed network services, with points-of-presence in 230+ countries and territories. Telstra s nationwide NEXT IP data network provides coverage to ~95% of businesses in Australia, while the company s growing LTE mobile network covers over 85% of the country s population. In March 2013, Telstra became the first service provider in Asia/Pacific and only the second in the world to receive Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) Carrier Ethernet (CE) 2.0 certification. Telstra achieved this milestone after passing stringent tests of its Ethernet Access and Ethernet Backhaul E-Line services, launched in August The operator's CE 2.0-certified E- Line products are now available nationally in more than 1,700 metro and regional exchange service areas. Telstra's next-generation Ethernet services use a set of access, pre-aggregation, and service provisioning and management platforms supplied by MRV Communications. MRV's CE 2.0-certified solution is deployed by Telstra as part of a nationwide network upgrade that complements separate investments the company has made to expand its 4G mobile network and broadband infrastructure. This study examines Telstra's motivation for embracing CE 2.0 technology, discusses the services capabilities enabled by MRV's platforms and explores how Telstra is implementing advanced CE solutions to enhance its service portfolio, deliver greater value to its customers and improve its profitability. Telstra's Motivation for Embracing Carrier Ethernet 2.0 Telstra commenced investigation into an advanced CE services portfolio in 2008 with the goal of providing both internal-use and customer-facing solutions. This portfolio is based on standardized MEF definitions and now includes a full set of intra-metro and inter-metro and regional Ethernet point-to-point and aggregated point-to-point services. Telstra's Wholesale customers have actively embraced these new Ethernet offerings as 'capable' alternatives to legacy SDH leased line, ATM and other data services. These new Ethernet services are more flexible, scalable, manageable and affordable than the traditional alternatives. Telstra's decision to embrace CE 2.0 technology and invest in more advanced Ethernet services was guided by the company's strategic focus on creating a network foundation that could support new revenue growth opportunities, improve customer satisfaction, increase service manageability and visibility, and simplify network costs and business processes. Telstra defined the following key business objectives for the next CE service phase: Create compelling data services for Wholesale customers who require scalability, higher bandwidths and improved Layer 2 services to support bandwidth-intensive and/or high performance applications. Deliver standard Ethernet Layer 2 services with bandwidth from 256 kbit/s to 10 Gbit/s for wholesale markets. Reduce operational costs through consolidation of multiple service offerings over a common network and OSS infrastructure. Increase revenues by creating new service offerings. Distribute the services nationwide with highly automated and scalable service provisioning. HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 2

3 Telstra also envisioned several new service and management capabilities that now enable the company to offer market-leading product offerings and ensure a high-quality customer experience. These included dedicated bandwidth profiles, class of service, service resilience, in-service monitoring and fault management. MRV's feature-rich access and aggregation devices are versatile enough to cover every aspect of Telstra's stringent requirements. For example, the platform supports dedicated and accurate hierarchical bandwidth profiles that can prioritize different streams within a service. In addition, MRV's hardware-based fault and performance management mechanisms permit Telstra to continually ensure that services meet defined service level objectives and the requirements for resiliency and secured management control. MRV was also able to meet Telstra's requirement for a robust and scalable solution that could be operationally efficient on a nationwide basis. MRV's provisioning and management system was chosen for its multiple capabilities including: Automated service order processing Centralized device and service turn-up configuration with minimal human intervention Robustness in handling numerous elements in parallel Collaboration with MRV has allowed Telstra to adopt CE 2.0 technology and augment it with automated service provisioning and SLA verification and monitoring. In addition, offering CE 2.0-certified services enables Telstra to align with industry best-practice on the delivery of CE MEF CE 2.0 certification means our customers can have complete confidence in the quality and reach of our Ethernet products. We are committed to evolving our business well beyond simple connectivity solutions while continuing to leverage the competitive advantage we gain from our national IP-MPLS/VPLS infrastructure. Julio Coelho, General Manager, DIPNAS, Telstra Wholesale services. This puts Telstra Wholesale in a stronger position to compete around service performance and the quality of the customer experience, which currently are the principal battlegrounds in today's Ethernet market. On the network front, the adoption of CE 2.0 solutions will enable Telstra Wholesale to gracefully consolidate and eventually exit multiple Ethernet and legacy offerings in various stages of their lifecycle. Service Capabilities Enabled by MRV's CE 2.0 Technology The MEF's CE 2.0 initiative is intended to transition the industry to a whole new level in terms of service capabilities, service manageability, interconnection among service providers and operational efficiency. Telstra's CE 2.0 service demarcation and pre-aggregation vendor, MRV, is among the first group of suppliers to receive CE 2.0 product certification. CE 2.0 services are characterized by extensive service definitions, advanced manageability and multiple classes of service (CoS) that take Ethernet well beyond the capabilities of TDM. Aligning with MEF CE 2.0 objectives and requirements provides Telstra a foundation for offering robust service level agreements, facilitates smoother Ethernet network-to-network interconnection arrangements with other service providers and makes it easier to deliver standardized solutions for specific industry verticals and wholesale customers. HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 3

4 MRV s OptiSwitch service demarcation and preaggregation solutions provide granular scalability, reliability, and network efficiencies and consequently help reduce operational costs. David Robertson, Director, Transport and Routing Engineering, Telstra Figure 1 illustrates the access solution set that Telstra selected from MRV. This includes CE 2.0-certified OptiSwitch demarcation and pre-aggregation products and the robust Pro-Vision service provisioning and network management system that is optimized for the large-scale operational environments of Tier 1 carriers. Figure 1: MRV s CE 2.0 Access Solution Within Telstra s Network Sources: MRV Communications Pro-Vision is a registered trademark of MRV HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 4

5 Figure 2 highlights key service and opex-friendly capabilities that the MRV platforms provide as an integrated package. The Pro-Vision platform is particularly worth noting because it enables Service Providers like Telstra to create highly manageable and automated CE services and to significantly reduce the service turn-up process effort, time and related operational costs compared to a manual process. Pro-Vision is deployable in a geographic redundant configuration to support high-availability targets. Figure 2: MRV s CE 2.0 Solution Set PRODUCT DESCRIPTION CE 2.0-compliant intelligent demarcation platform with 1GE interfaces CE 2.0-certified access/mini-aggregation platform with 10GE interfaces CE 2.0-compliant packet optical aggregation platform with10ge interfaces CE 2.0-optimized service provisioning and management platform CE 2.0 SERVICE & OPEX-FRIENDLY FEATURES Management / OAM Network Architecture Class of Service Protection Options Bandwidth Power Efficiency Interoperability Total Cost of Ownership NMS supports (1) zero touch service configuration, (2) dynamic service provisioning, (3) automatic topology discovery, (4) smart path computation for EVCs, (5) Y.1731 end-to-end performance monitoring, (6) 802.1ag fault management, and (7) an open northbound interface that allows retrieval of configuration, fault, and performance data from an OSS/BSS. NMS supports scalability to tens thousands access devices and hundreds of thousands of simultaneous Ethernet services. 4 classes of service (voice, video, critical data and best effort data) over a common user UNI. Each class has its own SLA. Quality of service architecture prevents oversubscribed best effort traffic from degrading SLA performance (frame loss, frame delay and frame delay variation) of higher priority CIR and EIR traffic. Supports multi-cos shaping to sub-rate SDH transport in rural areas. Supports a variety of protection topologies, including packet rings, mesh, 1:1 LOS and n+1lag. Flexible rates up to 10GE. Custom designed to lower cooling costs in central offices and data centers by supporting cold corridor/hot corridor configurations. Integration of CE 2.0 services with VPLS core. Multilayer support for L2 VPN and IP/MPLS VPNs for multiple services over the same access investment. Sources: MRV Communications HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 5

6 How Telstra Is Using CE 2.0 to Deliver Greater Value at Lower Cost Telstra is using MRV's CE access, aggregation and management solutions throughout Australia to support advanced Ethernet services that are designed to meet the customer's needs for rapid service turn-up, service assurance and bandwidth flexibility and granularity. Telstra's CE 2.0 services are offered with the following profiles: A throughput service activation testing profile A bandwidth profile A performance management profile A connectivity fault management profile These profiles are provisioned, activated and monitored by MRV's NMS and are implemented using inbuilt RFC 2544, IEEE Y.1731 OAM and IEEE 802.1ag OAM. Telstra's principal management requirements included nationwide coverage with a single view for GUI users, northbound interfaces to integrate the NMS with the carrier's OSS (see Figure 3) and the ability of technicians to install switches and active services with "zero touch." Figure 3: Integration of MRV s NMS & Telstra s OSS Sources: MRV Communications The MRV solution allows remote device turn-up, identification and configuration verification from a centralized location as well as automatic software updates with service profiles, database synchronization and backup/restore functions. The MRV NMS platform capabilities and MRV's willingness to tailor custom solutions resulted in many of these management requirements being met and Telstra has already begun to recognize operational cost savings from increased automation and network management/oss integration. HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 6

7 Euan Cottee, Technology Manager David Robertson, Director, Transport & Routing Engineering Arturo Cacace, General Manager, Aggregation Network Beyond the provisioning and management requirements, Telstra was also looking for a solution that would permit it to make more efficient use of 10GE ports on its provider edge routers. The flexible 1GE and 10GE port combinations on MRV's switches provide a cost-effective way for Telstra to offload router ports by preaggregating traffic in the local access network. Telstra's Future Service Possibilities Releasing CE 2.0-based services is the latest phase in Telstra's network and services evolution. Like other incumbent operators, Telstra must keep optimizing its network infrastructure and refining its service offerings to better compete with traditional and over-the-top (OTT) service providers. Telstra currently is studying emerging service and technology solutions like software programmability and control (SDN), network virtualization, application awareness and layer convergence that hold the promise of creating more revenue opportunities while helping control network costs. The multi-dimensional nature of MRV's CE 2.0 solution allows Telstra the option to enhance its current service portfolio using the same access and aggregation infrastructure. The capabilities of the MRV platforms span the entire spectrum of services that include next-generation Carrier Ethernet services, time and We were delighted to cooperate with Telstra and be part of their next generation network. Our major objective was to help Telstra reduce their operational expenses and reduce service turn-up time by offering MRV service provisioning software along with Ethernet access devices that enable faster time to market and remarkably simplify Carrier Ethernet 2.0 service delivery." Koby Bergman, VP Strategic Accounts, MRV Communications synchronization services, classic L3 services (IP VPN) and new application- aware and flow-based services based on deep packet inspection. In such an environment, MRV's Pro-Vision platform serves as a central focal point, running end-toend network-wide applications. HEAVY READING MARCH 2014 WHITE PAPER CE 2.0 CASE STUDY: TELSTRA S ETHERNET SERVICES POWERED BY MRV 7