24 February 2017, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced the release of its innovative vPIPE bearer network solution oriented to the service cloud era with the coming of Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017. This solution introduces software-defined networking (SDN) technology into IP+optical network for the first time, to implement unified planning, scheduling, operations and maintenance (O&M), and optimisation of both the IP layer and optical layer, so as to build an efficient bearer network with low cost. It is estimated that the solution can effectively reduce both CAPEX and OPEX by 50 percent, and improve the investment utilisation rate to 80 percent.

The cloud service era brings rapid growth in backbone network traffic. The Internet protocol (IP) layer and optical layer are facing high expansion costs. Until now, IP and optical networks have been planned, operated, and maintained individually, so the service launching, deployment and failure diagnosis cost time and money and were less efficient. ZTE’s vPIPE solution introduces SDN technology into IP+optical networks to implement pipeline resource pooling, which perfectly satisfies the demands of the bearer network in the cloud service era. The solution keeps the control plane of IP/multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) networks at the forwarding equipment, migrates path computation element (PCE) to IP controller, and migrates the optical network control plane to the optical controller. Then H-Controller is deployed to finally realise the centralised control of IP and optical networks. IP and optical networks exchange information via generalised multiprotocol label switching user-network interface (GMPLS UNI). Meanwhile, router port resource pooling and optical layer link resource pooling are achieved based on ZTE’s patented technologies, which enable flexible scheduling of bearer network bandwidth on demand. As a result, service deployment, coordinative protection, O&M, and resource optimisation are all significantly improved.

ZTE’s vPIPE solution can effectively assist operators in building an efficient bearer network to carry the emerging high-bandwidth services such as big video, as well as various diversified services in the cloud era. At the stage of network planning, with the IP+optical integrated planning software, it is possible to enter the specified requirements, and avoid over protection and invalid forwarding, as to save up to 50 percent in CAPEX. At the stage of deployment and O&M, the SDN controller gets all the information of the IP+optical network. With the customised APP, it can implement one-button service launch and fast failure diagnosis, and save up to 50 percent in OPEX. Based on network bandwidth resource pooling and dynamic network self-adjusting, network bandwidth can be flexibly scheduled on demand at the stage of network optimisation which can perfectly solve bandwidth traffic tides and improve the investment utilisation rate to 80 percent.