Sep 12, 2023

Product Testing and Validation Testbeds as a Service over Production Middle-Mile Networks

Frequent readers of CENIC News will be familiar with our support of testing and validation, including the recent validation of coherent optics over very long distances using CENIC’s production California Research and Education Network (CalREN). Members of research and education networking communities around the world will also know of CENIC’s longtime support for the annual Supercomputing conference network SCinet and the annual OFC conference’s OFCnet, both purpose-built networks that support the cutting-edge tests and demonstrations that take place during these premiere global networking events.

However, new middle-mile fiber infrastructures being built across the US take solution and product testing and validation to a whole new level. For vendors, service providers, and research teams, this new fiber infrastructure can play the role of an elastic testbed that matches real-world production networks.

Product Validation over a Production Network

As an example, a vendor may have successfully developed a new product in their own laboratory over a small test network of no more than 100 km. With this infrastructure, this vendor now has the opportunity to not only re-validate their product over middle-mile fiber but also further optimize it because they are no longer restricted to their 100-km network. They can now leverage the extent and abundance of middle-middle fiber to test and tune their products and solutions to 200 km, 500 km, or even up to thousands of kilometers, all facilitated by a dedicated fiber pair that is part of a new middle-middle fiber infrastructure. Additionally, if the solution requires colocation space for the purpose of amplifying or terminating a signal at specific locations, this can also be facilitated by the middle-mile colocation infrastructure.

“Service providers, vendors and researchers in certain disciplines can leverage the middle-mile fiber and colocation infrastructure as a flexible production-like testbed,” said Sana Bellamine, former CENIC network engineer and current Vice President of Engineering at the CENIC California Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative, LLC dba GoldenStateNet. “As an example, the middle-mile infrastructure can be a great production-like testbed for evaluating the performance of emerging technologies—such as coherent pluggable optics—over a very wide range of fiber distances, as we have done with the CENIC network.”

With California and other states initiating significant fiber-based network infrastructure projects, these new middle-mile fiber infrastructures offer the potential to generate revenue for these networks and spur innovation. This even applies to small research teams, who may have thought themselves unable to access a real-world fiber-based testbed for their product development. Through a bundled combination of short, medium, and long-term fiber leases, high-capacity services at Layers 1 through 3, and colocation, validation testbeds can give fiber-based middle-mile networks a whole new way to provide value to academic or commercial network researchers and service providers.

More Than Just a Testbed

Another potential use case is that of a service provider planning a major network refresh.

The middle-mile network can be leveraged as a backup production path for the duration of the service provider’s upgrade, whether via a dedicated fiber path, Spectrum as a Service (SPaaS), or a high-capacity Ethernet service. Since many of the middle-mile network projects currently in development across the US are extensive, such a service can support a wide range of geographic locations and distances. Again, the service need only be used as long as necessary, freeing the service providers from a long-term commitment.

Questions about these uses of middle-mile networks can be directed to testbeds@cenic.org. For more information about middle-mile networks, their design, and the products and services that can be delivered with them, please visit the CENIC website’s Publications page at CENIC.org.

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