NEPTUNE Stage I Network Architecture

Abstract

Developed over the course of over six years, the NEPTUNE Stage I network will be the first ocean observatory to link a wide variety of deepwater undersea science instruments with the global Internet. The development of NEPTUNE Stage I poses many challenges. The network must deliver high bandwidth, high power, while being manageable and reliable. NEPTUNE Stage I addresses these challenges using a combination of commercial submarine telecommunications equipment, commercial off-the-shelf equipment intended for enterprise applications, and newly developed components. A single, optically amplified fiber pair and distributed Optical Add-Drop Multiplexing (OADM) branching units provide a protected optical path to each node. Each optical path has an effective capacity of 2 Gb/s. Layer 2 switching and IEEE 802.3 ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol provide a protection mechanism and allow traffic to be shared on the two diverse paths thus making 4 Gb/s bandwidth available to each node during normal operation. The powering solution employs a constant voltage scheme capable of providing up to 10 kW at each node and over 120 kW total. An intermediate voltage of 400V is used for distribution with the node and from the node to instrument platforms.