Ciena Corporation

Cyan, Inc.

Cyan Optics, Inc.

Scott Pradels

Stephen John West

Stephen S Greer

A network element of a transport network has three fabrics housed within a single shelf of a telco rack, namely a packet fabric, an electrical fabric and an optical fabric. A stream of traffic including a plurality of lambdas is received at a trunk interface of such a shelf. The optical fabric in the shelf performs optical switching on the stream to replace a first lambda in the stream with a second lambda. The first lambda is converted within the shelf into an electrical signal. Also within the shelf, first frames are recovered from the electrical signal. The packet fabric in the shelf is used to perform packet switching on the first frames to generate a flow of second frames. The flow of second frames is transmitted at a client interface of the shelf.

Method of processing traffic in a node in a transport network with a network controller

Network controller, a multi-fabric shelf and, a method of processing traffic in a transport network

Heat dissipating electronic components and circuitry in a communication chassis are cooled by moving air at least through a midplane, between two groups of channels that are perpendicularly oriented relative to one another. In an illustrative embodiment, channels of one group are oriented vertically while channels of another group are oriented horizontally. Each channel, regardless of whether it is vertical or horizontal, is defined by space in the chassis between adjacent circuit boards. Circuit boards on one side of the midplane are electrically connected to circuit boards on the other side of the midplane by orthogonal connectors on the midplane. The midplane additionally has openings that enable movement of air between vertically-oriented channels and horizontally-oriented channels. Circuit boards of the two orientations are cooled by increasing air pressure in vertically-oriented channels or by decreasing air pressure in horizontally-oriented channels or both, depending on the embodiment.

Cooling a chassis by moving air through a midplane between two sets of channels oriented laterally relative to one another

Method of processing traffic in a transport network

Heat dissipating electronic components and circuitry in a communication chassis are cooled by moving air at least through a midplane, between two groups of channels that are laterally oriented relative to one another. In an illustrative embodiment, channels of one group are oriented vertically while channels of another group are oriented horizontally. Each channel, regardless of whether it is vertical or horizontal, is defined by space in the chassis between adjacent circuit boards. Circuit boards on one side of the midplane are electrically connected to circuit boards on the other side of the midplane by orthogonal connectors on the midplane. The midplane additionally has openings that enable movement of air between vertically-oriented channels and horizontally-oriented channels. Circuit boards of the two orientations are cooled by increasing air pressure in vertically-oriented channels or by decreasing air pressure in horizontally-oriented channels or both, depending on the embodiment.

A network element of a transport network has three fabrics housed within a single shelf of a telco rack, namely a packet fabric, an electrical fabric and an optical fabric. The shelf also includes inter-fabric circuitry, to bridge between the fabrics, e.g. packet-electrical and/or electrical-optical and/or packet-optical. The inter-fabric circuitries switchably transmit packets across fabrics in intermediate nodes of the transport network. The single shelf of some embodiments has a wall ('midplane') between a rear region that holds the three fabrics and a front region that holds inter-fabric circuitry, and external interfaces to optical trunks and/or packet services and/or optical tributaries.

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Santa Rosa, CA, United States of America

Scott Pradels