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Alcatel-Lucent expands and enhances IP/MPLS routing portfolio, strengthens position in the service provider edge market


WEBWIRE

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced its latest IP/MPLS edge routing innovations, with new capabilities and products to address fixed and mobile carrier requirements for increased network and service availability.

Being announced today are:

-the Service Router Operating System (SR OS) release 5.0 for the Alcatel-Lucent IP Service Router (SR) and Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) platforms;

-release 5.0 for the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM);

-a new 6-slot, 80Gb/s (full-duplex) chassis and switch fabric for the 7450 ESS;

-new Ethernet and Multi-service Media Dependent Adapter (MDA) interface modules.

All products being announced today are immediately available, except the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM release 5.0 which will be available in April 2007.

“As demand for real-time, multimedia IP services drives new service provider router investment, high availability must remain a top priority in vendor R&D organizations,” said Mark Bieberich, vice president, enabling technologies service provider - infrastructure solutions practice at Yankee Group. “This announcement demonstrates Alcatel-Lucent’s commitment to advancing high availability technology, which our research indicates is a key reason for the company’s success in IP/MPLS during the last 2 to 3 years.”

“Alcatel-Lucent is committed to continued innovation in support of service providers’ IP transformation projects. High availability, multi-service flexibility and simplified service creation and management are key elements of our strategy,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP activities. “With today’s announcement, we are demonstrating our continued technology leadership position in IP routing and our focus on driving innovations to meet the needs of our customers and their customers.”

Service Router Operating System release 5.0: Enhances High Availability

Alcatel-Lucent is extending its leadership in IP transformation with new features that address network scalability, availability and resiliency to help fixed and mobile carriers meet increasing service level expectations from business and consumer customers. Highlights of these new features include:

-Multi-chassis Link Aggregation and Subscriber Routed Redundancy Protocol (SRRP) — enables dual-homed links from any IEEE 802.3ad standards-based access device (e.g. IP DSLAM, Ethernet switch or Video on Demand server) to multiple Layer 2 or Layer 3 aggregation nodes. In contrast with slow recovery mechanisms such as Spanning Tree, multi-chassis LAG provides synchronized and stateful redundancy for VPN services or triple play subscribers in the event of the access link or aggregation node failing, with zero impact to end users and their services. Supported on Alcatel-Lucent’s 7450 ESS (MC-LAG only), 7710 SR and 7750 SR platforms, these industry-leading innovations enable carriers delivering “always on” applications such as IPTV, VoIP or managed business VPN services, to improve reliability and resiliency across their IP networks to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

-Pseudowire and VPLS Link Redundancy — extends link-level resiliency for pseudowires (PW) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) to protect critical network paths against physical link or node failures. These innovations enable the virtualization of redundant paths across the metro or core IP network to provide seamless and transparent fail-over for point-to-point and multi-point connections and services. When deployed in conjunction with multi-chassis LAG, the path for return traffic is maintained through the pseudowire or VPLS switchover, enabling carriers to deliver “always on” services across their IP/MPLS networks.

Release 5.0 of the Service Aware Manager: Enhanced Manageability
In addition to support for the new capabilities in SR OS release 5.0, enhancements to the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) improve scaling of network deployments to double the size previously supported. New features in Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM release 5.0 facilitate multi-vendor, end-to-end service troubleshooting through third-party device configuration management and alarm surveillance. The Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM release 5.0 also supports advanced automation for tunnel and service creation, provides automated node-level back-up and software download, time-of-day policy changes and OAM test auto-generation, with integrated tracking of the network topology.

Six-slot 7450 Ethernet Service Switch
Alcatel-Lucent’s market-leading MPLS-based Metro Ethernet solutions and services are enhanced with the new six-slot Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) chassis and 80Gb/s switch fabric, optimized for locations requiring high availability, but lower aggregate bandwidth and interface capacity. The six-slot 7450 ESS chassis leverages a new performance- and cost-optimized 80Gb/s (full-duplex) switch fabric with stateful switching and routing redundancy. Optimized for point-to-point and multi-point Ethernet services combined with triple play aggregation and subscriber management, the six-slot 7450 ESS chassis is targeted at service providers seeking to reduce CAPEX and OPEX by converging business and consumer services over a common MPLS-based Metro network. The new six-slot chassis complements the existing one-slot, seven-slot and 12-slot variants, providing the industry’s most complete set of MPLS-based Carrier Ethernet Switch/Routers.



New Interface Modules for Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS, 7710 SR and 7750 SR

-Combination Gigabit Ethernet/10 Gigabit Ethernet Media Dependent Adapter (MDA) — provides 1x10Gb/s and 10x1Gb/s Ethernet ports on a half-slot interface card, optimizing interface and chassis resources for triple play deployments. In one scenario, the Gigabit Ethernet ports could be used for aggregation of IP DSLAMs, while the 10Gigabit Ethernet port can provide a core network uplink. In another scenario, the Gigabit Ethernet ports could be used to connect video servers in a Video Hub Office (VHO), aggregating traffic via the 10Gigabit Ethernet port downstream towards subscribers.

-Any Service, Any Port (ASAP) MDA – enhances Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR platform flexibility and efficiency for multi-service edge routing (MSER) applications by supporting multiple services on a single interface. This four-port OC-3/STM-1 MDA supports the termination of Frame Relay, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and ATM access circuits down to DS0 level on each channelized OC-3/STM-1 interface. This allows fixed carriers to consolidate a broad mix of business services at the IP/MPLS edge as well as enabling mobile carriers to transport ATM-based 3G voice, data and signalling traffic across an IP/MPLS backbone as part of transforming their network infrastructure and services to IP.

According to Ovum-RHK, Alcatel-Lucent holds the number two position in the global IP/MPLS edge market with more than 19% market share in the fourth quarter of 2006. Over 160 service providers in more than 60 countries around the world have selected the Alcatel-Lucent IP portfolio as key elements of their IP transformation, including massive, multi-year projects at AT&T, BT and Telstra. In the past six months Alcatel-Lucent has announced new service provider IP transformation deployments at Cable & Wireless, China Mobile, CTM-Macau, Hawaiian Telcom, Indosat, SaskTel, Telefónica Latin America, Telecom Malagasy, Vodafone and Wind Telecommunications.



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