Ruijie Networks launches a new solution for Ethernet all-optical network construction to tailor campus networks for multiple industries

In recent years, the trend of "optical fiber replacing copper fiber" has gradually spread to China's enterprise market, and "all-optical network" has also become a major trend in the enterprise market. Since Ruijie Networks officially released the simplified Ethernet all-optical solution in March last year, the Ethernet all-optical network track has been opened and has gradually shown new possibilities to industry users.

On March 23, Ruijie officially released the Simplified Ethernet All-Optical 2.X solution (hereinafter referred to as "Simplified Optical 2.X") and four heavyweight products to the media. Based on 1.0, this release provides new products with higher adaptability and creates more targeted upgrade tools for specific industry needs and pain points such as education, medical care, and enterprises, aiming to provide customers in various industries with all-optical network solutions that are more suitable for the enterprise market.

Born in response to the times and needs, believe in the power of "light"

There are dozens of low-voltage wells in the enterprise park, and equipment from multiple departments is piled up, posing a great safety hazard. What should we do?

What can we do if the office area is adjusted, the wiring changes damage the decoration, unauthorized connection to non-network-managed switches and loop problems often occur?

Business changes and online debugging are arduous, business fault troubleshooting is difficult, responses are passive, and fault recovery is slow. What should we do?

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The above are common problems in the construction of enterprise-level campus networks.

As the campus network architecture becomes increasingly complex, business expansion is under great pressure, and transformation and operation and maintenance costs increase, how to use a single network to solve the problem of smart campus construction has become an urgent need for many industries. At the same time, in the construction of new infrastructure, "promoting the optimization and upgrading of fiber-optic broadband networks" has long become a rigid demand.

Ruijie's simplified optical 2.X solution adopts the deployment mode of fiber-into-the-room, innovatively and skillfully integrates color optical technology with Ethernet , and provides network bearing for campus services through a simple passive Layer 2 networking architecture and SDN technology, supporting business evolution.

In this solution, a Layer 2 passive Ethernet all-optical network carries all services, achieving passive aggregation nodes and zero operation and maintenance in weak current rooms. The introduction of color optical technology is a highlight.

In this regard, the product technology director of Ruijie Networks' switching and routing product division said that there was no precedent for using color optical technology in the enterprise market before. Ruijie chose to introduce color optical technology because " first of all, color optical technology has its own unique advantages, such as its passive nature; secondly, it is a rigid pipeline that can achieve bandwidth transparent transmission, save optical fiber, etc. These can help customers solve a series of difficulties brought about by the convergence equipment ." In addition, in terms of product cost, "the price of color optical modules is actually not much different from that of ordinary optical modules", which is also more user-friendly.

The advantages of Minimalist Light 2.X go far beyond this.

Compatible with Ethernet, easier to get started: Compared with the POL solution, the Minimalist Optical 2.X solution is more friendly to IT operation and maintenance personnel because it is compatible with the original Ethernet network architecture, has basically no learning cost, can be quickly started, and avoids the dilemma of "two networks" in operation and maintenance.

Exclusive bandwidth, smoother experience: Without splitting, it can achieve a high-performance network experience of 1000M/10G bandwidth into the room in a 1:1 ratio, better meeting high bandwidth requirements. At the same time, business expansion is more convenient. When bandwidth requirements are upgraded, since the access switch is sunk to the room, there is no need to change the optical link, only the core side equipment and access side equipment need to be replaced.

One machine, two networks, worry-free deployment: The innovative "one machine, two networks" deployment mode is adopted to achieve natural physical isolation of internal and external networks. Especially for the medical industry, it can better meet the requirements of Information Security Protection 2.0. At the same time, the equipment can be installed in an integrated manner, which can effectively reduce the cost of the entire network.

Advanced optical link diagnosis, smarter O&M: It can realize intelligent O&M management of the entire process. One person can manage it with one click. Optical network fault recovery only requires three steps, greatly improving O&M efficiency.

Intelligent operation and maintenance is also a major innovation in this upgrade. According to reports, the current minimalist optical 2.X solution can view the specific network of the entire optical circuit (including equipment performance, faults, and automatic detection of optical attenuation) with one click, and can also provide specific fault cause analysis, impact analysis, and subsequent processing based on the type of optical path alarm.

At the same time, after the optical circuit in the entire network is physically disconnected, the fault point in the network can also be quickly located based on the diagnosis of the high-order optical link . "There are two main ways to implement this function. One is to determine the source of the fault based on the color of the light on the optical port of our switch hardware and INC cloud computing; the other is to scan the QR code with a mobile phone to obtain the details of the entire fault link in one click. This can be said to be a 'black technology' of our Ruijie Network."

Since its release, Ruijie's simplified Ethernet all-optical solution has been widely used in the education industry, medical industry, and enterprise parks, and has received a lot of positive feedback. This is not only due to its natural advantages in architecture and protocol, but also because Ruijie Networks has always insisted on customer-centric innovation-driven, and the new solution launched this time also clearly reflects this point.

All-optical products in various forms are launched simultaneously to tailor campus networks for multiple industries

At this press conference, Ruijie launched four blockbuster products at the same time, which were specially designed for the user pain points in special scenarios in various industries, further strengthening the industry adaptability of the minimalist optical 2.X solution. At the conference, four speakers from Ruijie Network introduced the segmented solutions for the four industries of higher education, general education, medical care, and enterprises.

As the passive product launched at the conference, the RG-DEMUX/MUX series combiner/transparent aggregation products innovatively combine color light technology with Ethernet architecture. They are flexible to install and highly reliable, truly making aggregation nodes completely passive.

In the education industry, at the current stage of normalization of epidemic prevention, the frequency of online teaching has increased, and the transmission and concurrency of a large number of videos have put forward higher requirements for bandwidth; at the same time, in order to ensure the students' class experience, the requirements for the entire network latency will also be higher, which undoubtedly brings huge bandwidth pressure to the campus network. To this end, Ruijie Networks launched the RG-SF2920 series of minimalist optical in-room switches, which, together with the minimalist optical 2.X solution, help the education industry solve the needs of high-bandwidth services such as interactive classrooms/electronic schoolbags in smart teaching scenarios, the needs of centralized deployment and management of education bureaus, as well as the flexible expansion of office scenarios in colleges and universities, support for high-speed Wi-Fi 6 wireless networks, and smarter and simpler operation and maintenance.

In the face of the medical industry, Ruijie launched the RG-MF2920 series of minimalist optical indoor switches, which are innovative products that combine the special needs of the medical industry such as the Information Security Protection 2.0, and the "one machine, two networks" solution to improve the continuity of medical services with a smart all-optical network. It is reported that this solution is more applicable to new construction or renovation scenarios. "From the perspective of new construction scenarios, considering the information security construction, most hospitals have already considered the construction of internal and external dual networks when planning new building campuses. It is only necessary to conduct relevant optical network in-depth design with the design institute in the early stage; from the perspective of renovation scenarios, if indoor optical cables are laid, generally there are two-core and four-core cables, which can directly solve the problem of dual-link deployment of internal and external networks."

For corporate office scenarios, Ruijie RG-IF2920 series minimalist optical indoor switches are more suitable. This product has innovated the design of traditional switches, with a streamlined design and a shell that can be flexibly replaced according to different decoration styles; it has a built-in cable management function and does not require a separate weak current box. It can be used with the enterprise's minimalist optical solution to give new vitality to the enterprise's intelligent transformation.

Conclusion

There is no definitive answer to where the all-optical network will go and where it will end. However, after a long period of exploration of scenarios and research on customer needs, Ruijie Networks has given its own answer - in the enterprise market, the final form of the all-optical network will definitely be Ethernet-optical.

"Compared to POL, the simplified Ethernet all-optical solution does not require splitting and is compatible with the Ethernet protocol. At the same time, subsequent expansion will be relatively simpler, and the product will not be forcibly bound. According to different scenarios, we can also provide different adapted products and solutions. Therefore, we can say that in the enterprise market, Ethernet-optical must be the final development form of the all-optical network."