INNOVATION YOU NEED

TECHNOLOGY YOU TRUST

PEOPLE YOU DEPEND ON
Lights out for SDH
What you need to know but were afraid to ask
David Stokes, Elea Siegele and Tony Thorley

1 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

What SDH Taught Us That We Still Need Today
Tony
 A Brief History of Time SDH

• Pre SDH telecom transport

• Little service visibility
• No integrated resilience
• Non-standard; multiplexing / interfaces speeds
• No interworking between different systems
• What SDH (1990ish) did for us
• Comprehensive service monitoring
• Service protection and network resilience
• Managed and resilient timing distribution
• Interworking
• Next generation SDH (2006ish)
• GFP, VCAT, LCAS: mapping of data into adjustable variable sized containers

3 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 What SDH Users Want?

• Hard service separation

• Hard performance guarantees, accurate timing and excellent OAM

• Easy to design, deploy and manage

• E1s and T1s are still widely used for voice services and Sub E1/T1 services continue to
be used in large quantities by operators of power, rail, pipeline etc. networks

• SDH is well understood by generations of network planners, designers, users and

customers – who are reluctant to change

4 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

• Do you know what is out there?

– Where it is?

– How it is connected?

– What services are live?

– What services are live and being used?

– What services are being paid for (live and not live)?

• SDH carries internal services such as timing, network management for other networks,
EoW, site alarms..... all will need to be migrated or gradually replaced.
• Migration can be complex
– Change triggers customers to shop around

5 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

Technology approaches to achieving SDH
performance
Elea
 SDH Support in IP Networks

The solution is already out there, in networks and proven…

• RFC 4553 (2006) Structure-Agnostic TDM over Packet (SAToP)
– Pseudowire encapsulation for E1 and E3 bitstreams.

• RFC 5086 (2007) Structure-Aware TDM Circuit Emulation Service over Packet
Switched Net-work (CESoPSN)
– Pseudowire encapsulation of lower bit-rate nxDS-0 streams

• RFC 4842 (2007) SDH Circuit Emulation over Packet (CEP)

– Pseudowire encapsulation for SDH STM streams

• Additionally…
– Timing distribution – Adaptive / SyncE / IEEE 1588v2
– Network protection schemes in IP Networks - sub 50ms
– HW Protection schemes

7 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 The Next Level - Smart CES SFP

• Install it in any Neptune

IP Platform
• Suitable for Low port
fan-out use case
E1/E3/STM-1/4/16
• Option for Power and
STM-1/4 E3 E1
Space Constrained
• Interop with Neptune
CES Card
• End to end STM-16

Management

8 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 The World Has Moved to IP and IP Has Evolved…

YOU CAN TRUST THE IP NETWORK

• IP networks can deliver services with
low latency, low packet loss and
predictable jitter. Multi-Layer Automated Intelligent
– QoS designs that will prevent congestions
– Bi-directional paths
– New Traffic Engineering Techniques

• SLA-aware • Intelligent control and automation

– OAM, Performance Monitoring and Telemetry – Programmable Network Infrastructure
– Network architecture redundancy/protection
– Traffic Aware
– Control of misbehaving traffic using analytics
– Resource Aware (Network Slicing)
• Scalable and simplified
– Intent based
– New forwarding techniques – MPLS / SR
– Multi-layer

9 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 TDM to IP – Use Case

• T1 operator
E1
• Replacing EoL Network and E1 SDH Ring
technology - SDH

• CES overlay SRv6

GE

• Neptune and Smart SFP solution

GE SRv6 E1
E1
• Maintaining the Jitter and Latency Network
10G
from the SDH Platform GE

• Jitter Compensation at the Remote Voice

Switch
Neptune platform Terminal

10 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

Added Advantages of a New Transport Platform
Tony / Elea
 The Incredible Shrinking Element

There are strong space, power and age arguments

for replacing old SDH STM-16 ADM
from 2000
IP has all of the network capabilities required to Full 300mm rack
replace SDH whilst continuing to meet the needs of Consumes 400W
users: Switches 5Gb/s
• Resilience
and from 2015
• Latency guarantees
• Excellent OAM&P (operations, administration, 1U and 100W
maintenance and Performance) Switches 300Gb/s

• More accurate timing

CES STM-1 and E1 card
CES STM-4 and E1 SFPs

12 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 Support For New Services In One Platform
•

• Unified 4G/ 5G Mobile

xHaul

• Broadband Backhaul

• Multi-Access Edge

• IP wholesale services

• Business services: MEF

services, L2 VPNs and L3
VPNs

• Business and Mission

Critical networking

• SDH to IP Migration
13 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary
 Why Operators Are Still Buying SDH
Why Could This Create A Longer-term Problem For Them
Tony
 Why are some operators still buying new SDH?

• To patch or extend an existing network; SDH/SONET Equipment Spending

9
• To interconnect with other SDH networks;
8
7

US $ (Billion)
• Because their customers insist on SDH;
6
• Because they understand and trust SDH 5
4

BUT 3
2
1
• Availability of SDH is coming to an end; and 0
0 0 3 00 4 00 5 00 6 00 6 00 8 00 9 01 0 01 1 01 2 01 3 01 4 01 5 01 6 01 7 01 8
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
• Shouldn’t new investment be in a technology
Source: IHS Markit Enterprise Edge Connectivity
with a future? Strategies, NA Enterprise Survey, 2019

15 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

What Are the Migration Options
Elea and Tony
 Migration Options Migration Reality

• Convert the TDM • In most cases, power and space

services/devices to IP savings are insufficient to
• New IP capable equipment; or overcome the costs and issues:
• Engineering resource is needed to plan
• Upgrade existing equipment to IP
and implement service changes
capable interfaces; or
• Customer service resource is needed to
• Emulate TDM services on an IP inform customers of service outages
capable network • New services are likely to be
significantly lower margin than legacy
• Carry TDM services over a • Customers faced with change can move
G.709 OTN provider or cease the service

• ……. but keeping SDH running

increases risk of failure

17 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 Is Mass Migration the Only Option…..?

• Migration costs are high, so don’t add new services to old SDH networks and don’t build
more SDH
• Build new IP networks with Circuit Emulation capabilities or add Circuit Emulation to your
existing IP networks
• Leverage proven packet switched network technologies like label switching to deliver SDH
services together with IP services.

• Migrate sensitive and critical legacy services from SDH to IP irrespective of the cost!
– As SDH ages, the likelihood of an unrecoverable failure grows
– Apart from the serious risk to life and critical services, not acting now to secure sensitive
and critical services risks: reputational damage; fines; litigation; and regulatory penalties.

18 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 SDH-to-IP Migration Benefits

• Reduce the risks and costs of having a legacy network.

• Future proofing your network as services move to all-IP
– Automation and Orchestration

– Multi-service Platform

– Higher Capacity

– New traffic engineering schemes

– Network support for new services

• Optimised use of Network Resources

– Hard QoS for predictable performance coupled with statistical
multiplexing of Best Effort services.

19 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary

 Summary
David, Elea and Tony
 Summary

• Stop investing in SDH, withdraw from using SDH:

• SDH is EoL and EoM
• Skilled people running SDH are retiring
• There are significant risks in using out of date technology
• Ribbon has the expertise and capabilities to support transformation:
• SDH to IP, OTN and WDM
• Ribbon has field proven processes for:
• Critical Infrastructures
• Service Providers
Now is the time to tackle legacy SDH – move to IP and migrate
sensitive and critical services as a priority
21 Ribbon Communications Confidential and Proprietary
Questions