Avici Claims Breakthrough Routing Product for Next-Gen Networks

Looking to evolve beyond an also-ran core router maker in a fast-contracting market, Avici Systems Inc. hopes to upstage its largest competitors with the development of a software-driven product designed to give service providers greater flexibility in building next-gen networks.

Though the universal control plane product will not debut until later this year, Avici on Thursday announced a new business unit, Soapstone Networks, which will continue product development and advancement, separate from its existing router business unit.

Fueled by profitability, the desire for differentiation and a product it believes will solve what it called the unaddressed needs of service provider members of the global IPSphere Forum, Avici began work on the product about eight months ago.

In simple terms, the Avici system is advanced routing software that will be embedded in ATCA-based hardware platforms with commodity components to be inserted in telecom equipment, with network management functionality and links to back-office systems.

Analysts say the belief that everything converging on IP was too simplistic as carrier Ethernet and PBT are being increasingly viewed as a better convergence option than IP and MPLS.

“The problem is that lower layer network technologies don’t have the control planes needed to create network tunnels, manage capacity and so forth,” explained Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. “What Avici is doing is creating a universal control plan that is based on IP technology, and then applying to all network technologies.”

What will happen when the product makes it to market with this approach to convergence? “It opens a lot of new options for building networks using lower-cost equipment like Ethernet switches, and it is a big threat to the larger router vendors,” said Nolle.

Avici hopes to capitalize on momentum in the standards arena – from groups including the IPSphere Forum, the ITU and the TeleManagement Forum – toward the creation of a mechanism that separates application control of the network from details of network technology, or, Nolle said, the specific vendors involved.

Avici is implementing standards from these groups in the universal control plane product so that service providers can better control network equipment behavior.

Avici co-founder and CTO Larry Dennison compared the desired end result to public network-based data services such as frame relay.

“Companies want the service relationship they had with carrier services such as frame relay,” he said. “The service is highly reliable and service providers can fully control and manage it, typically spotting problems before their customers.”

In more business-oriented terms, carriers need to get back control of the network, Dennison said. “It’s about service creation, not network protocols.”

Many sources agreed that service provider members of the IPSphere Forum have been asking for products that give them this control and support the parallel efforts of standards groups toward this goal.

And while the product will not be demonstrated until NextComm in mid-June, Nolle said Avici is leading the way, which could result in others following suit.

“It has to be an embarrassment to players like Alcatel, Cisco and Juniper that they’d be pre-empted on this issue,” said Nolle.

Dennison said the demonstrations at the June trade show will be in conjunction with Avici’s partners in three market segments: traditional telecom equipment vendors, network management companies and back-office systems makers.

Avici Systems Inc. www.avici.com  

CIMI Corp. www.cimicorp.com  

IPSphere Forum www.ipsphereforum.org  

TeleManagement Forum www.tmforum.org

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