Failure recovery in the MANTRA architecture with an IPoWDM SONiC node and 400ZR/ZR+ pluggables

Abstract

The utilization of IP over wavelength division multiplexing (IPoWDM) boxes in optical networks introduces coordination issues at the control plane level between the optical and packet domains. Indeed, IPoWDM boxes are technically packet devices, but the configuration of coherent optical pluggables requires knowledge of optical network state information (e.g., wavelength availability). MANTRA (metaverse ready architectures for open transport) aims to define a new SDN control architecture for managing IPoWDM, enhancing coordination between the packet and optical controllers. Within MANTRA, two distinct architectures were presented: Dual and Single. However, only the roles related to controller management are defined, while clear procedures are not specified for dealing with resource provisioning and failure recovery. This leads to the need for the definition and implementation of tailored procedures. Besides the characterization of the coherent optical pluggables performance, this paper presents and compares three procedures based on MANTRA to coordinate and control IPoWDM nodes in a multi-layer network performing failure recovery. The considered solutions have been designed and experimentally validated with a focus on the achievable traffic recovery performance considering IPoWDM configuration and communication within the SDN control architecture. An experimental testbed, comprising a sliced IPoWDM node running an extended version of the open-source SONiC network operating system, has been deployed to validate these solutions, with a comprehensive analysis of the time required to recover a real traffic flow that spans both the packet and optical domains.