ZXCTN 9000-E Series: High-End IP RAN Helping Operators Thrive in the Pre5G Era

IP RAN offers not only IP network features such as statistical multiplexing and flexible expandability but also RAN features such as high reliability, easy management, clock synchronization, and QoS. Therefore, in the current 3G and LTE stage as well as the future Pre5G stage, many operators have chosen IP RAN as their bearer solution for mobile backhaul.

To meet the trend of widespread IP RAN applications, ZTE has launched a customer-made high-end IP RAN ZXCTN 9000-E series with each slot supporting 400 Gbps or 1 Tbps (Fig.1). While remaining in the leading position in bandwidth infrastructure, ZTE is more than ever committed to deploying its smart pipe concept in bearer infrastructure and helping to optimize IP RAN mobile backhaul operation.

ZXCTN 9000-E series can flexibly meet the requirements of the core, convergence, and access layers for switching capacity and slot quantity in different network architectures, as shown in Table 1.

ZXCTN 9000-2E series is applicable to access or small convergence nodes in IP RANs using the E2E L3 VPN solution. The product series is highly-integrated and has a height of 220 mm. It can be easily installed in a transmission cabinet of 300 mm in height and is more properly placed in a base station or an office device cabinet that occupies small space. Among the ZXCTN 9000-2E series, 9000-2E4 and 9000-2E10 can respectively provide access capacity of 120 Gbps and 240 Gbps, supporting 2M IPv4, 1M IPv6, and 8K VRF. Both of them are small in size but large in capacity. ZXCTN 9000-3E and ZXCTN 9000-5E are applicable to small and medium convergence scenarios, while ZXCTN 9000-8E and ZXCTN 9000 8E Plus are suitable for large convergence and core-layer devices. ZXCTN 9000 8E Plus supports 1 Tbps/slot. ZXCTN 9000-18E is the best choice for a super core, since it has 18 service slots in total and supports 1 Tbps/slot. Since ZXCTN 9000-3E, ZXCTN 9000-5E, ZXCTN 9000-8E, ZXCTN 9000-8E Plus and ZXCTN 9000-18E have universal service cards, operators can significantly reduce their costs in spare parts.

ZXCTN 9000-E series provides customer-made functions for IP RAN:
● Strong adaptation: To meet the requirements of IP RANs for wide coverage in complex environments, the 9000-2E4 has the capability to run outdoors for a long time at a temperature of –40°C to 65°C. ZXCTN 9000-E series lowers the requirement for equipment room and helps operators reduce their network construction costs.
● Leading clock technology: ZXCTN 9000-E series provides the innovative SyncE+IEEE1588v2 clock synchronization solution with industry-leading clock synchronization precision and a comprehensive clock synchronization that can traverse third-party networks.
● Multiservice bearing capacity: ZXCTN 9000-E series supports not only high-density 10GE and 100GE Ethernet interfaces but also POS, ATM, and TDM interfaces. The PWE3 technology can be adopted to support ATM and TDM emulation, satisfying the need for access to various services during the IP RAN evolution.
● Supporting seamless MPLS: Seamless MPLS uses unified end-to-end bearing technologies to carry traffic from home and business users as well as mobile base stations, aiming to achieve fixed mobile convergence (FMC) and carry all services over one network. Seamless MPLS implements MPLS encapsulation for all services at the access layer and builds a unified MPLS control plane that covers the core, metropolitan area network (MAN), and access network. This greatly reduces difficulties in network planning and O&M. Moreover,  unified MPLS O&M is used for network and service protection. This enhances end-to-end network reliability. Seamless MPLS also improves service provisioning efficiency by reducing the number of service provisioning points and related static configurations and by obviating coordination between different departments.
● Fast service provisioning and adjustment: ZXCTN 9000-E series provides plug and play (PnP) and easy commissioning so that NMS software debugging engineers can quickly activate each site after hardware engineers finish device installation, cable connection, and power-on. The graphical NMS provides wizard-like service, which means services can be provisioned quickly as long as key parameters are selected. When there is a need for expanding or reducing transmission links , the NMS can automatically increase or reduce nodes through complete network protection without affecting existing services.
● Accurate network quality measurement: IP RAN carries services from base stations and carrier-class government and enterprise networks. As these services are sensitive to delay, jitter, and packet loss, an end-to-end service measurement method must be provided to verify whether the services meet SLA guarantees. Traditional measurement for delay, packet loss, and jitter is not accurate enough to meet the KPI measurement requirements of IP RAN. Therefore, hardware-based measurement is introduced to determine real service KPIs and network QoS and enable visual O&M. In the SDN era, network quality can be optimized based on KPI measurement to ensure that SLA requirements for service bearer are met at all times. IP RAN has higher requirements for KPI measurement. Based on RFC 2544, ITU-T Y.1564, TWAMP, and ITU-T Y.1731 protocols, ZXCTN 9000-E series provides the hardware-based KPI measurement solution that can accurately measure delays and jitters with a precision of up to 100 us level, and measure packet loss with a precision of up to 1E-6 level. The measurement solution can be used to measure end-to-end L2 VPN and L3 VPN services, and can also offer segmented measurement at the network layer to quickly locate KPI faults.
● SDN evolution: ZTE's SDN IP RAN solution based on hierarchical controller architecture can implement end-to-end centralized control, fast service provisioning, and real-time optimization for IP networks. The SDN controller acquires network topology, computes and chooses paths, and builds service channels, so that there is no need to configure services on each device and technological threshold is thus lowered. Through the ZXDNA, NMS, and third-party traffic analysis, the performance monitoring system triggers network optimization and offers multiple optimization modes such as interactive optimization, automatic optimization, and manual optimization as required by the user policy. Visual network topology, visual service paths, and visual LSP traffic are also supported for smart and efficient network O&M including service management, performance monitoring and network optimization apps. ZXCTN 9000-E series fully supports SDN functions, evolution-based PCEP, BGP-LS, SNMP, and Netconf/Yang interface protocols, as well as the future-oriented OpenFlow protocol.

ZXCTN 9000-E series is designed for IP RANs. With its customer-made hardware and software functions, ZXCTN 9000-E series will surely be able to help operators survive the competition in the Pre5G era.