New Routers Look to Legacy Services

At the show, Amber Networks Inc. (www.ambernetworks. com) did a live public demonstration of TDM private-line service transported over an IP/MPLS network, based on its edge routers.

"Service providers are looking to bring more revenue into IP networks," says Alex Dobrushin, Amber's vice president of marketing. "There are benefits for emerging carriers only building IP networks, so they can tap additional revenue."

Adding TDM services to the IP mix can enable IP-only network operators to double their market opportunity, he says. For incumbents, the product helps cap investments in traditional networks and moves those services to the new networks in which they're investing.

The application was made possible by multiservice adaptation, advanced multilevel queuing and traffic engineering functions of the company's ASR2000edge routers, which were introduced at last year's SUPERCOMM. As of early June, Amber Networks hadn't named any customers for the routers, but it was working with 15 carriers in trials and had shipped some products for revenue to undisclosed customers.

In its demonstration this year, Amber Networks also showed interoperability of its edge routers with core routers from Avici Systems Inc. (www.avici.com), Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) and Juniper Networks Inc. (www.juniper.net). Various CPE-based routers and IADs were used to deliver subscriber traffic.

Also, Amber Networks introduced a new edge router called the ASR2010 for low-density PoPs. It offers the same capabilities as the company's 2020 model, but it is smaller-density and 30 percent cheaper than 2020, which sells at a starting price of about $150,000. Available now, the 2010 uses the same chassis and line cards as the 2020.

Also looking to bring legacy services into the IP fold, Laurel Networks Inc. (www.laurelnetworks.com) unveiled its ST200 Service Edge Router, an IP/MPLS box that sits at the edge of core networks.

"We call the product a service edge router, so we're focused on creating services," says Steve Vogelsang, co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing at Laurel Networks, which was founded a year and a half ago by former Fore Systems employees. "We combine the ability to create services with the ability to do it at a very high capacity."

The equipment, which offers 200gbps of switching capacity, uses MPLS to offer dedicated Internet access at high speeds--typically DS-3 and up.

"We also enable scaling of existing services like ATM or frame relay at very high speeds across an MPLS backbone," says Vogelsang. Running all that over IP allows service providers with a variety of services--like ATM, frame relay and IP--to do that across a common MPLS backbone, eliminating the investment a carrier would have to make for separate backbone networks for each service. It also would help carriers leverage their existing investments in high-speed IP backbones and to allow network operators to scale service interfaces.

Laurel Networks did a live demonstration at SUPERCOMM, which included the ST200 that took in Ethernet frames and scaled it across a long-haul MPLS connection.

The product's accounting features let carriers introduce new revenue-generating services, such as destination-sensitive billing. For example, a carrier could have one tier of pricing for U.S.-based traffic and premium pricing for traffic that terminates abroad. The router does policy-driven classification, allowing carriers to do things like differentiating off-net vs. on-net traffic. And it supports services like IP VPNs, which employ MPLS to create a secure IP backbone for each customer.

All traffic management functionality is distributed across line cards, so as capacity is added, so is traffic management capability and routing table capacity.

"Almost all routers on the market today centralize those functions," says Vogelsang. "We have 10 slots for line cards. Most routers on the market, meanwhile, are 8 slots, so as you add packet processing there's a lot of issues in how you scale an edge router."

OC-12 and OC-48 SONET/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) line cards for the router can channelize to any level. For example, an OC-48 port can combine DS-3, OC-3 and OC-12 channels in any combination simultaneously. And each channel can do frame relay, ATM, packet over SONET, point-to-point protocol (PPP) or TDM. Vogelsang says that reduces a carrier's upfront costs, because it then only needs to buy one card to address multiple types of lines and customer needs. It reduces the cost of spares, and it makes things go more smoothly if service-demand forecast models don't play out as expected.

Vogelsang adds that the product's closest competition is probably Amber Network's ASR2000; Cisco Systems Inc.'s 10000 product; the Juniper M20 and Unisphere Networks Inc.'s (www.unispherenetworks.com) ERX1400.

"But we have much higher port density--three to seven times that of competitors," Vogelsang notes. The company would not disclose pricing for the product, which was expected in June to begin beta lab tests with Tier 1 providers. General availability is slated by the end of the year.

Another new competitor in the space is Tiara Networks Inc. (www.tiaranetworks.com) with its multiservice edge router, to be generally available this quarter. Kash Mitra, vice president of corporate development, says the product can be positioned as a high-speed, multilink frame-switching product, an MPLS edge router or as a maximum transfer unit (MTU) aggregator for network access points (NAPs) using virtual LAN (VLAN) technology.

Floundering telecom giant Lucent Technologies Inc. (www.lucent.com) announced five new products to fill in the gaps in its IP CPE product line. Those products bring new voice/data integration to the company's IP services strategy, new scalability, a new network management layer, and better integration with the company's SpringTide platform, says Steve Reustle, director of product management with Lucent's Pipeline and SuperPipe products. The new features enable the company to deliver end-to-end IP service solutions for a variety of applications, such as managed security, IP VPNs, managed bandwidth and QoS, and integrated data and voice.

The five new products are additions to Lucent's existing product lines and include: Access Point 300, a high-end IP router with additional features, to be generally available this month for $4,000 to $5,600; SuperPipe 170 and 175, the low-end answer to the Access Point line, available now and ranging in price from $1,000 to $2,000. Reustle adds that SuperPipe 175 is an IAD that supports data features, routing, firewall, VPN and VoIP applications; and VPN Firewall 20 and 1000, available now for $1,495 and in September for a starting price of $84,995, respectively.

Reustle says all the platforms were "purpose built." "Our IP services line wasn't just starting with a router and then adding security."

He adds the Access Point products offer double the performance at half the price of competing products on the market.

WorldCom Inc. (www.worldcom.com) is using the AccessPoint IP service routers to support its IP VPN service. AT&T Corp. (www. att.com) is rolling out managed QoS service with the AccessPoint, providing for managed bandwidth and QoS and is based on a standards-based QoS implementation called class-based queuing. Sonera Corp. (www. sonera.fi/english) of Finland, meanwhile, is rolling out managed bandwidth QoS with AccessPoint to serve customers from London to Moscow.

Also on the VPN front, Ericsson Inc. (www. ericsson.com) came out with its network-based IP-VPN solution, building on the company's current Packet Backbone Network and Engine solutions.

Neal Calanni, vice president of marketing and product management for Ericsson's IP infrastructure group, explains that, to date, VPNs have been based on a CPE model and have used tunneling in a static way. That method puts a lot of burden on CPE, is expensive and difficult to scale, and is tough to manage since equipment is at the customer site, he says.

Ericsson's Carrier VPN Solutions address those problems, he says. One way is by bringing MPLS into the fold.

"MPLS lets you scale VPN networks from a carrier perspective," Calanni explains. "It makes signaling of virtual circuits automated using things like border gateway protocol (BGP). What's new [at Ericsson] is we've added MPLS into a number of our backbone platforms. Ericsson has IP core and IP edge routers; and ATM multiservice switches."

The new solution provisions the VPN at the edge of the carrier network--rather than via the router at the customer premises. And MPLS means that core routers can look at the label of the payload to decide how to route traffic, rather than having to delve into the payload itself and delay transport as a result. Ericsson's support of 2547b is a standard draft from the IETF that other major router vendors also support, allows separate routing tables up to 1,000 per edge router.

In addition to MPLS, Ericsson will support IPsec on its routers for VPN applications.

"But we feel the MPLS approach is going to be more scalable, and we think that's the way [the] industry is going to go," says Calanni.

Also announced at the show was Ericsson's Policy Deployment Manager.

"Last year, we announced our multiservice management suite. Now we're extending it to support an MPLS environment," says Lisa Ludwig, Ericsson's director of product marketing for network and service management. "The goal of Policy Deployment Manager is to target customer care reps" rather than technical people, to enable them to provision service quickly.

Policy Deployment Manager configures links between edge routers in the carrier network and edge routers at the customer premises. It defines VPNs, selecting which routers, subnets and sites are associated with VPNs. Its built-in rules-based engine validates rules of the VPN, so the carrier can make sure two companies aren't sharing elements mistakenly. And the Policy Deployment Manager's user interface, which is XML-based, allows the provider to customize it and offer it to its ISP customers.

The manager also does QoS provisioning.

"You have to define the service level the customer wants," explains Ludwig. "You can prioritize network services. Then you define what elements the policy is affecting." Policy Deployment Manager also sets metrics to be monitored.

The new MPLS/VPN support on Ericsson's edge routers is in beta now, with general availability slated for August. Policy Deployment Manager also will begin shipping in August.

In the core of the network, Avici Systems unveiled Release 4.0 of its IPriori software, which is focused on allowing customers to start to build end-to-end multivendor services networks. Release 4.0 does that by extending the functionality of MPLS to Avici's routers. It also adds MPLS border gateway protocol (MBGP) and label distribution protocol (LDP) so carriers can set conditions of traffic treatment per VPN. It's high density--2-port GigE module that supports 320 ports per system. And it doubles the capacity of Avici's Terabit Switch Router (TSR), which allows customers to get 1.6 terabit systems with four TSRs.

"Driving new services for increased profits is our message," says Esmeralda Swartz, Avici's director of strategic marketing. "Traditional profit models of legacy services are starting to erode. Service delivery of new services is really slow and complex. Equipment costs are growing faster than revenues. So [carriers are] trying to get IP services in place to drive new profits. We're attempting to solve that through scalability and additions to IPriori software."

Avici has done MPLS interoperability testing with other vendors of popular equipment including Cisco, Juniper, Riverstone Networks Inc. (www.riverstonenet.com) and Unisphere Networks Inc. (www.unispherenetworks.com)

"Another part of that is our ability to showcase the first 40gig/OC-768 router," Swartz adds. "That's tied to our scalability story. We believe scalability means to offer [added] capacity in service and to grow the network from lower speeds to higher and in same platform vs. a new router every time you need to introduce a new higher-speed line card."

Cisco Revs Up Routers With 10gig, Other Features

Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) has announced that it has added 10-gigabit interfaces to metro optical and core routers and launched three new router products.

The 10 gigabit/OC-192-capability was added to Cisco's ONS 15454 flagship metro optical transport product. The card starts shipping late this summer. Also new to the 15454 are a four-port line-rate gigE card, which lets carriers push transport further to the edge, and new physical route protection in the form of support for four-fiber bidirectional line-switched rings.

The company also added channelized OC-12 (4- and 8-port versions) and OC-48 (1 and 2 ports) to its 7600-edge router, which now does Ethernet over MPLS to deliver transparent LAN services.

New Cisco products unveiled at SUPERCOMM include the 12406 model, a 10-rack router with a 10gbps interface. According to the company, the 12406 is the only 10gbps 1/4 rack router in the industry and offers six times the performance of the closest competitor's product of this size.

The small form factor means carriers can put it at multiple points in the network, says Sanjay Pol, senior director of marketing in Cisco's optical transport business unit. Possible applications include using it at the network edge for peering or aggregation, or at Internet data centers. It has an in-service upgradable switch fabric and supports all the line cards used in other routers in the 12000 product line.

Another new product is Cisco's 7400 Internet router, available now. A one-rack product, it offers twice the ports in half the size of the next competitor and can be used as high-end CPE, says Pol.

The third new router Cisco introduced was the 10005, which does IPsec to extend MPLS VPNs over the Internet securely.

Cisco also made strides in operational support for its router products.

According to Robert Redford, vice president of marketing for Cisco's public carrier IP group, Cisco is the only vendor in the high-end router space shipping graphic user interfaces for point-and-click router configuration.

The company offers what it calls a new programmable network layer to automate configuration of routers. It includes an "intelligent agent" software addition to the routers' (Internetworking Operating System) IOS software, which enables the routers to tell a new device called the IE 2100 what services they can offer. This automates all upgrades to routers across the network. The procedure has a "two-point commit" so a person knows whether the upgrade works before committing it to the network. All this results in higher accuracy, reduced operational costs and quicker provisioning, says Redford.

Of course, Cisco was also part of the Optical Interoperability Forum's UNI demonstration. Redford says Cisco was the only major router vendor at the event showing multivendor OIF user-to-network interface (UNI) interoperability, noting that he believes UNI is the way to marry the IP and optical layers in the near term. Some other vendors are pushing GMPLS to do that job, he says.

But while Cisco believes GMPLS is clearly the way to go in the long term, Redford says GMPLS doesn't make sense today because carriers first need OSSs for things such as monitoring systems, capacity planning systems and billing systems.

Lucent Exposes Multiservice Core

Lucent Technologies Inc. (www.lucent.com) unveiled its MSC 25000 core multiservice solution, which it says will be the flagship for its next-generation core product line.

Key features of the solution are its "unprecedented" scale and reliability; its ability to bridge between IP services and existing data networking; and its ability to drive the convergence of voice and data environments, says Sarbpreet Singh, vice president of product management for Lucent's core switching group.

These features address the fact that service providers see a pressing need to rapidly deploy revenue-generating services and to leverage their existing networks to whatever extent possible, he says.

Service providers still operate multiple networks for various services such as frame relay, ATM, private line, video and so on. Carriers would realize significant capital and network management savings in going to a single network for all their services, Singh adds.

The MSC25000, which offers "pay as you grow modularity" so service providers only need invest in equipment as demand requires, consists of three shelves: the node control processor, which is the brain of the system; the core switch shelf; and the service shelf, which supports various services including ATM, IP, TDM at any speed, with any service, on any shelf.

That's all linked by high-speed optical interconnect. "This architecture lets service providers spend money incrementally," says Singh, noting it offers 30gpbs of access bandwidth per service shelf.

As far as scalability, the MSC 25000 scales from 320gbps to 2.5tbps. While existing products in the network typically support about 1.5 million virtual circuits, the MSC 25000 can support 15 million VCs, says Singh.

The new solution can process 750 million packets per second, vs. the 60mpps commonly handled by existing products, he adds. And it does 50,000 call setups per second, vs. existing equipment at 5,000 calls per second.

Lucent sees the product competing with the likes of the Alcatel/Newbridge (www.alcatel.com) 7670, Marconi Corp. plc's (www.marconi.com) BXR48000 and products likely to evolve from Nortel Networks Ltd. (www.nortelnetworks.com) Passport line.

Singh explains that service providers need this kind of scalability to enable them to bring up new services as quickly as possible, and that the requirement to scale will be even greater as carriers offer all services on a single network.

"There's nothing that approaches the MSC25000 in terms of overall reliability," Singh adds.

The product offers "five 9s" reliability; transports voice; and offers ATM and IP/MPLS QoS support. There is 1:1 shelf redundancy (if an entire node processor shelf goes out, it's backed up); and 1:1 redundancy on processing cards. The core shelf has 1+1 redundancy, meaning traffic is sent from the service shelf to the core shelves and the node processor picks one. On the service shelf, Lucent supports 1+1 redundancy at the physical layer. And within shelf is 1:1 redundancy for each shelf and automatic protection switch (APS) at the physical layer.

The company built an optical cross-connect into the MSC 25000 to allow for APS, so the box can get both feeds into the switching fabric. But instead of processing two signals needlessly, the product picks the feed before it gets processed, Singh says.

"Nothing else supports this today," he adds. "There are no other products with integrated cross-connects."

Through its support of MPLS and the Optical Internetworking Forum's (www.oiforum.com) user network interface (UNI) space, which addresses the problem of long provisioning times in the local loop and on the optical backbone, the MSC 25000 supports dynamic bandwidth allocation from the optical core to data edge devices.

The MSC 25000 is expected to be in beta tests beginning in September and in controlled introduction by the end of the year. The company would not discuss pricing on the product.

WaveSmith Offers Small Footprint, Scalable Multiservice Switch

WaveSmith Networks Inc. (www.wavesmithnetworks.com) announced two physically small, highly scalable multiservice switch solutions that allow carriers to make the best use of central office real estate, add capacity as demand requires and migrate as desired to an IP/MPLS architecture.

The company's Distributed Node (DN) products can be used in ATM, TDM, frame relay or IP/MPLS architectures. Based on the Open Call Model, the system allows signaling methods to be added or changed while in service.

The DN4100 is 7.5 inches high; the DN2100 is 3.5 inches high. Each offers 7.6gbps capacity per vertical inch of rack space, and operates on 250 and 160 watts, respectively. Their Distributed Optical Backplane allows carriers to tie shelves across different racks to scale up to 320gbps with ports ranging from DS-1 to OC-48c.

According to the company, that's 600 percent more capacity in the same footprint than leading legacy platforms such as Lucent Technologies Inc.'s (www.lucent.com) CBX500 and GX5500; Nortel Network's (www.nortelnetworks.com) Passport 15000 and Cisco Systems Inc.'s (www.cisco.com) Stratacom gear.

Pricing for the products start at $28,000.

The products are slated for general availability in the fourth quarter. Cable and Wireless plc (www.cw.com), Comcast Corp. (www.comcast.com), Genuity Inc. (www.genuity.com) and Vanion Inc. (www.vanion.com) are among the companies testing the product this summer. Additional lab trials will follow this fall by other carriers, including Verizon Communications (www.verizon.com).

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