Date: 19/09/2009

New converged IP/Optical backbone network solution from Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent has introduced an innovative converged IP/Optical backbone network solution for core IP networks, and targeted for video and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

Alcatel-Lucent uses control plane integration between the optical and IP layers, yielding benefits such as rapid service provisioning, increased resiliency and supports 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit speeds in the data plane, increasing network capacity. It's Converged Backbone Transformation solution offers a range of traffic "grooming" options that enabling traffic forwarding at the most economical layer in the network. These include lambda (or wavelength)-level, port-level and sub-port-level grooming of IP traffic to enable capacity increases in increments where and when needed and enable core router traffic to be offloaded onto the optical transport network.

"Core traffic continues to increase significantly and we don't see that changing. We need to ensure our capacity matches the needs of our customers and fulfils their expectations for growth," said Pieter Poll, chief technology officer, Qwest. "We've been exploring new approaches to address traffic growth and customer demand and recently announced that Qwest is working with Alcatel-Lucent to evolve our nationwide backbone network to reach industry-leading 100 Gigabits per second speeds by implementing Alcatel-Lucent's LambdaXtreme and 7750 Service Routers."

"Internet, voice, data, and especially video traffic continue to increase, pressuring service providers to find ways to cut the cost of reliably transporting the traffic while simultaneously delivering new services," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "In a recent Infonetics survey, two-thirds of the service providers responded that they expect to combine their data and transport operations by 2010. Alcatel-Lucent's approach fits service provider goals of efficiently scaling many traffic types in a converged IP and optical architecture, while offloading the core routers, to help streamline their core networks."

"The status quo of adding more router capacity in the core to keep up with rapidly growing Internet traffic simply isn't sustainable for our customers," said Basil Alwan, head of Alcatel-Lucent's Carrier portfolio strategy and president of the company's IP division. "In seizing the opportunity for this core network transformation, we find ourselves in a unique and enviable position. With our strong market presence and technology leadership in both IP routing and optical transport, Alcatel-Lucent is ideally placed to help our customers deal with this problem with a unique and highly effective solution."

For more details visit www.alcatel-lucent.com