SUPERCOMM SHOW NEWS: Ethernet to be Key Topic at SUPERCOMM

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Ethernet clearly will be one of the key topics at SUPERCOMM this year. "We believe metro Ethernet is one of the key areas of growth going forward for service providers, so going forward it is a key area for Alcatel," says Keith Allan, assistant vice president of strategic and solutions marketing in the fixed networks division at Alcatel.

"We're not looking at a single point solution to deliver Ethernet services," he explains. "We're integrating Ethernet solutions into all these different product segments and portfolios."

The metro Ethernet market has been slowed somewhat by the lack of features in vendor products, says Allan. Among the key issues to be addressed are customer retention, maximizing service uptake and service reach, and ensuring new Ethernet services fit in with the service provider's overall business strategy, he says.

That said, Alcatel is helping operators by delivering Ethernet interworking with legacy technology. Alcatel had expected to make frame relay VPN to Ethernet VPN interworking generally available in April. The company also offers assistance in the areas of marketing and engineering through its professional services department.

Allan says some end customers are moving to Ethernet services because of the price advantages, but that large enterprises are waiting for SLAs. So, Alcatel made sure all of its network elements have a high level of carrier grade requirements to allow service providers to obtain a broader base of customers. Using DSL to extend the reach of Ethernet is another strategy Alcatel is using to help service providers make Ethernet services more available to a broader base of carriers, he adds.

Alcatel also plans to highlight its storage over optical networks solutions at SUPERCOMM.

In other SUPERCOMM news on the Ethernet front, metro optical equipment company White Rock is introducing electrical DS3, DS1 and fast Ethernet interfaces in single, 3-rack electrical tributary shelf. The company says its Electrical Tributary Shelf 2, which is part of the White Rock VLX2020, is the highest density solution with these low bandwidth access options in any SONET platform.

Generally available in August, the new shelf allows the system to deliver up to 672 DS1s; or up to 192 fast Ethernet connections into OC192, as two examples.

The solution can either map DS1s to SONET using the VT1.5 container or can simply pick up DS1s and drop off traffic as DS3s.

Elsewhere on the show floor, Riverstone Networks Inc. will feature its recently announced the XGS family of Layer 3 switches, which delivers 10gbps performance at less than $10,000 per port. The company says that's more than 50 percent below the cost of other solutions.

According to The Dell'Oro Group, most customers are unwilling to pay the significant price premium of 10gbps over gigabit Ethernet. In its recent Ethernet Switch Report, the Dell'Oro Group says, "The price of 10gbps Ethernet still has to come down significantly to entice enterprise customers into volume deployment."

Riverstone's XGS, which will be generally available by SUPERCOMM, combines line-rate switching and routing with MPLS. Each linecard ships with MPLS hardware. The XGS 9016 is a 16-slot, 320 gig unit and the XGS 9007 is an eight-slot 160 gig fabric product.

In Tolly Group tests, Riverstone's family of XGS switches received the Tolly Tested True Ten (4T) certification.

The Tolly Group's 4T program puts vendor solutions through rigorous tests designed to certify that the solutions deliver line-rate 10 gigabit performance and are otherwise reliable. With 100 percent zero-loss throughput across all 10 gigabit Ethernet ports for frame sizes ranging from 64 to 1518 bytes, Riverstone's XGS family is the first to receive 4T certification.

Also at SUPERCOMM, Telect Inc. will release new products including Ethernet-based and protected versions of its Vector Optical Transport System, and the full line of LCX Fiber Panels, including a high-density 1RU panel that enables advanced optical distribution in limited-space applications.

U.S. Metro Ethernet Services
Source: IDC, December 2002

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