Nortel Takes Part in World’s Largest Carrier Ethernet Multi-vendor Interoperability Demonstration

GENEVA - The world’s largest and most diverse Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor interoperability demonstration will feature PBB and PBT technology pioneered by Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT].


At the Carrier Ethernet World Congress (CEWC), September 24 to 28, Nortel will join members of the Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem including ANDA Networks**, Extreme Networks**, Gridpoint Systems**, Hammerhead Systems**, Ixia**, RAD Data Communications**, Soapstone Networks**, Spirent Communications** and TPACK** to demonstrate the cost benefits and interoperability of Carrier Ethernet technology. In total, some 24 leading vendors participated in the event, believed to be one of the largest of its kind to date.

Carrier Ethernet delivers simple, cost-effective Ethernet for service providers who need the benefits of scalable, reliable, secure and manageable networks to deliver the Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics of carrier-grade transport technology.

The interoperability demonstration at CEWC is the live culmination of the hot staging and evaluation of Carrier Ethernet interoperability conducted at the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) laboratory** in Berlin during August.

The demonstration will feature Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) and Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) technology, which uses industry-standard Ethernet to drive a radical change in the economics of carrier networks. PBT is being incorporated into the emerging standard IEEE 802.1Qay (Provider Backbone Bridge - Traffic Engineering).

“Carrier Ethernet is changing the game for service providers, it lowers the cost and complexity of metro networks while making available resources to meet the growing bandwidth requirements required of networks.” said Peter Newcombe, president, Carrier Networks Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nortel. “The interoperability demo at CEWC shows conclusively that PBT can be successfully deployed in a multi-vendor environment and is ready for carrier deployments worldwide - and it really delivers on the Nortel promise of Business Made Simple.”

Also, at this year’s Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Nortel will deliver the following key sessions:

Considering the value of PBT as a connection-oriented Carrier Ethernet solution - Mervyn Kelly, director, product management, Nortel
Looking forward to Next-Generation Ethernet technologies, systems and services - Dave Allan, consultant architect, Office of the CTO , Nortel
Nortel and the Carrier Ethernet ecosystem successfully demonstrated the following in the interoperability test:

Interoperability with the MPLS core network to enable end-to-end Ethernet services
Resilient PBT trunks with sub 50ms protection switching
Simplified operations by placing the network under the control of the latest PBT tunnel and service provisioning systems
To learn more visit Nortel at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Geneva, Switzerland, September 24 - 28, 2007 where you can meet Nortel experts to discuss some of the topics raised during the conference sessions and find out how to implement PBT as a simple and cost-effective Carrier Ethernet solution.