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By Todd Wynia, Artesyn Communication Products


Open Shelf Architectures Reduce
Service Provider CAPEX And OPEX


 

With the economy continuing to exhibit strong growth, major carriers are moving forward with plans to migrate their existing circuit-switched voice and data TDM networks to IP packet networks. They’re also rolling out new VoIP, mobile data, video-on-demand, and other multimedia services. Growth should be particularly strong in the wireless area, as service providers expand their coverage in established markets like Europe and North America, ramp up to provide coverage in third-world countries, and begin to deploy new worldwide 3G wireless data services.

As telecom OEMs formulate their design and platform strategies, they must grapple with the age-old question of what to build in house, and what to outsource. Historically, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) have built virtually everything in house. More recently, though, deregulation has made the service and equipment landscape increasingly competitive, making it difficult to deliver home-grown equipment in a timely, cost-effective fashion.

Open platforms like AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA make outsourcing convenient, providing easy access to mass-produced, off-the-shelf hardware and software components. This open architecture approach greatly reduces the time and cost associated with designing and manufacturing telecom equipment, savings that are ultimately reflected in reduced capital expenditures for service providers. These open platforms also facilitate the design of modular, flexible telecom systems that are easier to scale, upgrade, service, and maintain, benefits that are ultimately reflected in reduced service provider operational expenses.

Open Telecom Frameworks Evolve

Subsystem OEMs, particularly suppliers of board-level products, have been trying to lure telecom equipment manufacturers with open shelf architectures for two decades. Most of these, however, have been adaptations of general-purpose platforms not ideally suited to telecom. AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA are the first open platforms developed from the ground up specifically for the telecom industry, and the first developed with input from leading TEMs and service providers.

ATCA provides the quintessential platform for building scaleable, cost-effective, high-availability, high-density telecom systems. Its high-bandwidth (10 Gbit/sec per link) switched fabric gives it the throughput and scalability needed to host advanced multimedia services and grow system capacity. Its large form factor (8U) and high-power capability (200W per blade) enables it to implement complex functions and accommodate a larger subscriber base in a smaller footprint. Its redundancy and “hot swap-ability” reduce susceptibility to point failures and enable individual blades to be serviced and upgraded without disrupting overall service. And its integrated system management facilities enhance availability by providing greater visibility into and control over blade level operation.

AdvancedMC enhances ATCA flexibility by extending its high-bandwidth, multi-protocol interface to individual modules, which can be replaced in the field without taking entire ATCA blades off line. Like ATCA, AdvancedMC features a high-speed serial packet interface (up to twenty-one 12.5 Gbit/sec I/O channels), a high power handling capability (up to 60W per module), and an IPMI interface, which enables shelf management to monitor and control individual modules residing on ATCA blades.

Modular ATCA/AMC Framework Reduces CAPEX

ATCA blades equipped with AdvancedMC modules provide a versatile platform for building telecom systems that can be designed, manufactured, and spared at lower cost. Once deployed in the field, these modular systems also reduce operating costs by enabling service providers to scale, upgrade, provision, and service their systems with a finer degree of granularity.

The ATCA/AdvancedMC framework reduces equipment cost by facilitating a Lego-like approach to blade design that eliminates the need to develop a custom blade for each application. With ATCA/AdvancedMC, TEMs can create application-specific blades by combining a generic ATCA carrier with generic AdvancedMC components such as network interfaces, control processors, network/signal processors, and mass storage devices. Because the blade and modules are generic, they can be reused across multiple applications, thereby reducing design time and production cost. The generic nature of the blades and modules also reduces the number of unique blades that TEMs have to purchase and stock, and makes it easier for TEMs to outsource or purchase blades and modules off–the-shelf.

Modular, field-replaceable ATCA/ AdvancedMC systems are also easier and less expensive to scale and upgrade, which reduces CAPEX by enabling carriers to deploy the minimal hardware needed to service their subscriber base. Consider for example, an ATCA-based core router equipped with AdvancedMC network processor modules, or a VoIP gateway equipped with AdvancedMC transcoding modules. Both systems could be deployed in a minimal configuration and scaled later to accommodate additional subscribers by adding blades (or individual modules) without taking the gateway or router off line. This pay as you go approach substantially reduces service provider capital outlays, while providing ample headroom for future expansion.

ATCA/AdvancedMC Reduces OPEX Too

Reduced equipment costs make the ATCA/AdvancedMC platform attractive to service providers on a tight budget. Even more attractive, however, is the long-term savings this platform offers for OPEX. One of the principal ways that ATCA/AdvancedMC systems reduce OPEX is by reducing the impact of component failures. Because ATCA blades and AdvancedMC modules are field replaceable, they can tolerate failures to individual blades/modules with minimal disruption to overall service.

Consider, for example, an ATCA optical WAN blade with eight AdvancedMC modules, each providing dual OC-3/STM-1 channels. A failure in any particular OC-3 channel might, at most, take out two OC-3 channels (one module), versus all 16 for a monolithic blade on which the 16 channels are mounted directly to the baseboard. Similarly, failures to any single module on a multi-channel SIGTRAN signaling blade or DSLAM blade would only impact the signaling links or subscriber connections provided by that module.

Modular ATCA/AdvancedMC blades also reduce provisioning cost by enabling service providers to scale and provision their systems according to actual demand. Consider, again, the ATCA optical WAN card equipped with eight AdvancedMC cards. In this configuration, the optical channels can be added and provisioned in blocks of two rather than 16. This fine granularity can also be used to reduce the cost of sparing. Regardless of the number of active channels used in the system, spare replacements (on line and on the shelf) would usually require only one or two modules, not an entire 16-channel blade.

One of the greatest contributors to overall CAPEX and OPEX savings in ATCA/AdvancedMC systems is the IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) system control framework, which enables chassis management to actively monitor and control individual ATCA blades and modules. Through IPMI, chassis management can monitor physical system health characteristics (such as voltage, fan speed, temperature, and power supply status), negotiate power allocation, and remotely shutdown/restart the system. This fine-grain monitoring and control reduces service provider OPEX for carriers by making it easier for chassis management to detect and correct faults.

Another way that IPMI can help reduce OPEX is by facilitating negotiated power management, which helps chassis management optimize system-wide power consumption and cooling budgets in high-density systems utilizing large numbers of high-performance processors. Through IPMI, chassis management can negotiate with individual blades for power allocation, and dynamically throttle back power to boards that are idle or not essential. This dynamic capability enhances availability by enabling shelf management to ensure continuous operation for the most important boards when total power usage and heat generation threatens the available budget. It also increases effective power density by reducing overall power consumption, which enables service providers to deploy more heavily populated systems.

MicroTCA Addresses Low- To Mid-Range Apps

The high performance, flexibility, and availability of the ATCA/AdvancedMC platform make it an excellent fit for many mid-range to high-end telecom applications. This performance, flexibility, and reliability, however, comes with a price tag that makes it too expensive for many low-end central office, access, outside plant, and customer premises applications.

To address low- to mid-range telecom applications with tight space and/or cost constraints, PICMG is in the process of creating a new specification based on the AdvancedMC platform known as MicroTCA MicroTCA will provide a compact framework that enables AdvancedMC modules to be plugged directly into a 4U rack-mountable, 19-inch shelf, which is only 300 mm deep, including cabling.

The MicroTCA specification is still in development, but the plan is to provide scaleable bandwidth from 1–40 Gbit/sec and scalable reliability from three 9’s to five 9’s. Utilizing the same serial transport mechanism as AdvancedMC, MicroTCA backplanes will provide a bandwidth of up to 12.5 Gbit/sec per channel, with a bias toward supporting star, dual-star, and full-mesh topologies. Similar to ATCA and AdvancedMC, MicroTCA will be protocol agnostic and provide redundant IPMI interfaces.

By leveraging existing ATCA/ AdvancedMC infrastructure (such as IPMI) and utilizing the installed base of off-the-shelf AdvancedMC modules, MicroTCA will be able to offer many of the performance and availability advantages of an ATCA shelf in a more compact form factor at a fraction of the cost. This versatile, economical shelf architecture should prove very attractive to service providers who have tradtionally utilized custom products to handle edge, outside plant, and customer premises applications.

Together, ATCA, AdvancedMC, and MicroTCA provide a modular, scaleable end-to-end framework that addresses the full spectrum of high-availability telecom applications, from core routers and voice gateways, to converged customer premises equipment. This open framework drives equipment costs down by enabling TEMs to quickly configure systems using affordable, off-the-shelf hardware and software components. And it reduces operating costs by enabling carriers to scale, manage, and service their systems with a higher degree of granularity. For the first time, service providers now have the flexible, high-availability platform needed to cost-effectively deploy new packet-based networks and multimedia services while providing backward compatibility and interoperability with legacy circuit-switched TDM networks. IT

Todd Wynia is vice president of marketing at Artesyn Communication Products. For more information, please visit the company online at www.artesyncp.com.

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