BANGALORE, INDIA: Alcatel-Lucent announced 100 Gigabit Ethernet interface module for the edge, in July.
"As service providers plan their network evolution to address the growing traffic demands on their networks, a clear and credible path to 100GigE is a key strategic consideration," says Houman Modarres, director, product marketing, IP Division, Alcatel-Lucent, in an exclusive interview with CIOL. Excerpts:
CIOL: Recently Juniper launched a similar one (in June) and Cisco had also tested a 100 GbE router interface card a year back. What has Alcatel to offer?
Houman Modarres: The announcements from competitors apply exclusively to the core of the network, where large volumes of traffic are simply routed from one location to another. Alcatel-Lucent is the first in the industry to support 100GE where it matters most - at the edge and in the metro, where most of the network intelligence resides.
Alcatel-Lucent 100GigE modules can also be deployed in the core of the service provider network for IP transport. Alcatel-Lucent also announced full IP edge routing support in addition to IP transport, on an interface that can be deployed in the core, at the edge or in the metro, for delivering high-touch services as well as transporting high volumes of IP traffic.
While Cisco had indicated testing of 100G in the past, many of those efforts were with respect to aggregated 10G links feeding into muxponders for optical transport at 100G. Cisco has not made a formal announcement of 100 Gigabit Ethernet on its core or edge routing platforms to date, while that can certainly expected.
CIOL: Why is there a need for 100GbE interface card now?
HM: Video and collaborative business applications are driving significant Internet traffic growth. Internet traffic will grow by a factor of five between now and 2013. After 2010, over 2/3 of consumer traffic will consist of some type of video (video on demand [VoD], walled garden programming, over the top of user-generated content). Mobile broadband traffic is also expected to double each year for the coming future.
Within a typical day of the Beijing Olympics coverage last year, NBC or National Broadcasting Company, an American television network, is estimated to have generated 128 Terabytes of Internet traffic between streaming and VoD, accessed by over three million live streams and four million VoD sessions of various resolutions.
Similarly, in July 08, YouTube generated over 1100 Terabytes of traffic, serving over five billion streams to over 91 million viewers. That means, the NBC online Olympics traffic was only about 12 percent of YouTube traffic levels!
As traffic grows, higher speed Ethernet links will provide superior economics, simpler network interconnects and avenues for tighter IP/optical integration. These factors combine to enable the lowest cost of transport for the widest array of services.
CIOL: What is the difference between Juniper's and Alcatel's?
HM: While Juniper recently announced 100GE interface support on their T1600 core routers, this is a pure transport interface, a faster "bit-pusher" pipe without support for services such as broadband Internet access with subscriber management, IPTV or Layer 3 and Layer 3 business VPN services.
A fundamental basis for our advantage is our innovative silicon. The FP2 chipset represents the industry's first 100G network processing unit (NPU), developed in house by Alcatel-Lucent. Unlike other suppliers who must wait for availability of third party commercial silicon, we control our own destiny by having invested in our own innovative silicon.
