China Unicom, Huawei Deploy T-SDN to Promote CUBE-Net 2.0 Strategy

China Unicom's Zhejiang subsidiary together with Huawei have successfully deployed a Transport-software-defined networking (T-SDN) project on the Hangzhou metro transport network to provide bandwidth on demand (BoD) leased lines for government and enterprises.

This announcement is a milestone for the success of China Unicom's Cloud-oriented Ubiquitous-Broadband Elastic Network (CUBE-Net 2.0) strategy and the deployment of the commercial SDN network and marks the start of network architecture innovation.

China Unicom’s proposed CUBE-Net 2.0 architecture focuses on users and data and relies on ultra-broadband networks and data centers to implement cloud-and-network synergy, on-demand adjustment, and high network flexibility, thereby achieving network as a service (NaaS). In a typical application scenario, group customers initiate new service scenarios and requirements, such as rapid deployment of new services and on-demand provisioning and adjustment of bandwidths. China Unicom aims to introduce SDN technology to transport networks to proactively meet group customer service requirements and improve customer experience.

Huawei understands China Unicom's service characteristics and provided an overall solution, integrating hardware and software. In terms of hardware, Huawei provided its MS-OTN bearer solution that implements unified cross-connect and grooming for multiple services to construct metro transport networks in line with a simplified network concept. This effectively carries all large-bandwidth services and meets the future requirements of network development. In terms of software, Huawei provided its T-SDN BoD leased line solution that uses SDN controllers to globally manage network-wide resources and offers standard northbound APIs through network orchestrators to achieve network programmability. T-SDN BoD enables group customers to handle leased-line services online using a self-service terminal, such as a tablet, and monitor leased-line performance anytime and anywhere, including SLA and delay. In this way, Huawei T-SDN achieves on-demand bandwidth subscription and rapid service deployment, greatly improving customer experience.

"Huawei’s T-SDN BoD solution meets China Unicom's strategic requirements for future transport networks and satisfies the actual requirements of group customer leased line services at the Zhejiang subsidiary," said Hu Hui, general manager of the subsidiary's network construction department. "We will continue to work with Huawei in the T-SDN field to proactively promote the commercial use of T-SDN."

"Huawei uses T-SDN to simplify network architecture and build flattened and automated agile networks and continuously provides the optimal T-SDN solution for carriers, helping carrier network transformation," said Zha Jun, president of Huawei’s Fixed Network BU.

Huawei has taken part in 156 SDN projects for 21 of the top 50 global telecommunication carriers up to the end of August 2015, including multiple application scenarios such as data center, WAN, government/enterprise leased line, and MAN edge. This also means that the Huawei SDN solution is industry-leading and widely recognized. In the ONF, IETF, and ETSI-NFV standards organizations, Huawei has contributed the most key documents and occupies core positions in multiple workgroups. Huawei is also an initiator of the SDN Industry Alliance and a founding member of the ONOS controller open source project.