Ciena Explorer — Netlandia
A cartoon 3D globe called Netlandia, with a country on each face. Side A, Photonia, carries the
transport networks. Side B, Packetland, carries the data network that rides on
them. Spin the planet all the way round, or flip sides from the panel, then click
one of the six major networks to open it on its own in open space, where every
site can be clicked for its equipment and connections. Packets run along every link.
| Side A: transport | Side B: data network |
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Two ways to read it: Explorer and Engineer
The switch under the title picks how the map is labelled, and the choice is remembered.
| Explorer | Engineer |
|---|
| for | an introduction to networking: no acronyms, no part numbers | people who already know the trade |
| look | the board game: sticker cards, rounded type, a daylight sky, whales and an airliner | a flat, dark console: plain type, mono labels, no toys |
| networks | Countrywide light highway, Internet core, Mobile phone network… | Long-haul RLS mesh, IP/MPLS core, 5G mobile xhaul… |
| sites | light junction, booster hut, collector router, beach cable station | RLS ROADM site, RLS amplifier hut, aggregation router, cable landing station |
| site card | what the place does and what is inside, in plain words | its role and the Ciena equipment in it |
| explainers | Learn how it works: data travels as light, many colours in one fibre (DWDM, in plain words), what a packet is, finding another way, who goes first, your phone call's journey | Explore the technology: CDC ROADMs, mesh restoration, SR-MPLS, TI-LFA, G.8032, QoS, CFM… |
Explorer's words live in js/vocab.js and its explainers in js/basics.js; a test
checks that nothing Explorer prints uses the trade's acronyms (the DWDM topic, which
is there to introduce one, is the exception). A link to an explainer only one mode
has, such as #ipcore.sr, switches to that mode.
The two sides
The globe is a toy world, not a diagram: nothing is wired up on it. The equipment
stands in the landscape as landmarks (a data center campus, a landing station on
the beach, amplifier huts up the mountain road, cell towers on the hills), and each
network is a region of its country. Hover a region and the ground there tints
in that network's colour and its landmarks lift; click it to open the network.
An airliner circles the planet between the two countries.
Side A, Photonia (transport) is laid out in three bands so the networks don't
pile up: regional rings through the western towns, the countrywide RLS mesh across
the middle, and the Lumen City metro on the east coast. Coherent Isle, off the east coast, is
the stepping stone for the subsea cables.
The submarine network wraps round the planet. Its region runs from the strait
and Coherent Isle across the ocean to Packetland's three landing coasts, so it can be
found, and opened, from either side; both sides' panels list it.
Side B, Packetland (data network) has Coreburg in the middle with its pair of
core routers, the IP core meshed out to each corner, an aggregation ring hugging
the city, and the 5G xhaul ring out in the countryside.
The six major networks
Each is a region of its country on the globe (the harbour and the strait, the
heartland, the capital, the countryside); clicking that region, or the network's
entry in the panel, opens it.
| side | network | what's in it | example Ciena gear |
|---|
| A | Submarine network | 4 cables, 7 landing stations, 61 repeaters; 3 cables cross to side B | GeoMesh Extreme |
| A | Long-haul RLS mesh | 8 ROADMs, each with 3+ routes, 21 amplifier huts, landing on 3 Lumen City hubs | RLS with WaveLogic 6 |
| A | Lumen City metro optical | 4 metro hubs on a packet-optical ring, 4 data centers on a DCI ring | RLS, Waveserver |
| B | IP/MPLS core | 6 core routers in a mesh, an internet exchange, cloud and 5G core data centers, and a company VPN joining 3 offices | 8100 Coherent Routers |
| B | Metro aggregation | a segment-routed ring round Coreburg on both core routers, 6 business customers on rings, 5 homes on fibre (PON) and a streaming cache | 5170, 3900 series |
| B | 5G mobile xhaul | 5 pre-aggregation hubs and 7 cell sites on a ring, uplinked into the core at 2 points; each cell site's RAN split into RU, DU and CU | 5164, 5166 |
The product names are illustrative placements, not a real network design.
| IP/MPLS core on its own | 5G xhaul on its own |
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| |
A network on its own
Opening a network replaces the globe with just that network floating in open space:
its sites, cables, amplifiers or repeaters, and the traffic on them, with no terrain
or buildings. A network on one side is laid flat. The submarine network, which wraps
from side to side, keeps its shape round an invisible planet and is seen from high
over the pole. Back to the globe, the browser's back button or Esc returns.
Each network has its own address: #submarine, #longhaul, #metro, #ipcore,
#aggregation or #xhaul. A link can open straight into one, and a separate page
can later take over that address.
The submarine network opens as an undersea scene: the cables lie on the sandy sea
floor with the repeaters along them, the landing stations stand on the shore above
a translucent sea surface, and whales cruise just above the floor. On the globe,
cable-laying ships work each subsea route, and the network's glow follows the
cables all the way round the planet.
The 5G radio: RU, DU and CU
Every cell site's base station is split in three, as in a real 5G RAN: the radio
unit (RU) up the mast, the distributed unit (DU) that runs the real-time radio
stack, and the central unit (CU) above it. Click a cell site or hub and its card
shows which parts it hosts and where the others are.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
