Core Routers Remain Central Players in Carrier Networks

Across the globe, T1 carriers are in various stages of transitioning all services to an IP-based network backbone, from frame relay and ATM to voice, Internet and video traffic, which has been having a bubble effect on demand for core routers. This is inspiring an outpouring of technical advances that exploit these points of traffic collection by adding new layers of service- and application-sensitive software and hardware to enable new business models.

Says Mike Capuano, senior manager for product marketing at Cisco Systems Inc., “the true value of this convergence lies in the platform’s support for new services and applications.”

At the service layer of the expanded functionality in routing platforms there’s a seamless interconnection from suppliers to core to edge to end users that provides a uniform, fully automated approach to compiling billing information, handling subscriber authentication, finding subscribers and much else, Capuano explains. “The applications layer is where service providers really climb the value chain,” he adds. “They have the opportunity to combine many user applications in unique ways, whether it’s video conferencing with multiplayer gaming, HDTV with presence, voice service with video service or something else.”

For more on Cisco's core router strategy, visit our Added Insight section at www.xchangemag.com/addedinsight and read “Cisco Adjusts Core Router Technology to Future Carrier Requirements.”

These capabilities will benefit both sides in the inevitable struggle between service providers and applications suppliers over how the pie is split as new business models come into play. Signs of this already are apparent in preliminary talks between big media players like Sony and peering service suppliers whose new core technology platforms create ways to sell more directly to end users, says Junaid Islam, vice president for technical strategies at Caspian Networks Inc., a supplier of core router enhancement technology.

For more on Caspian's solution, visit our Added Insight section at www.xchangemag.com/addedinsight and read “Caspian Solution Gives Legacy Core Routers New Life.”

“If you can identify media types — movies, Web games, e-mails, whatever — you can sort and monetize for purposes of supporting new business models,” Islam says. “Twenty-four months ago the notion of Web-based delivery of quality media products from Sony or Apple was a discussion about vaporware at industry conferences. Now peering providers are in a position to support those models.”

For carriers, the breakthrough to convergence comes in the wake of rigorous testing of new core routing platforms based on the marrying of IP transport with MPLS. “IP/MPLS has emerged as the backbone vehicle for the converged core network,” says Henry Goldberg, senior analyst for networking at In-Stat. “Convergence is driving up traffic volume, and that requires technology that assures highly reliable performance across all service categories. This technology appears to have met that requirement.”

Now that the moment has arrived to put this technology to use, service providers have their hands full sorting through the options. In-Stat reports Cisco remains the dominant core router supplier with about two-thirds of the market, but other suppliers, most notably Juniper Networks, are gaining ground.

“Juniper has gone from a 24.8 percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2003 to a 27.7 percent share in Q1 2005,” Goldberg says. Cisco was down from 67 percent for 2004 overall to 64.3 percent in the first quarter of this year. Also gaining market share is the No. 3 supplier, Avici Systems Inc., which reached 1.9 percent market share with core router sales in the first quarter compared to 1.2 percent for all of 2004.

Juniper has been introducing new elements to its T series core and M series edge/metro core routers to serve the needs of network capacity expansion, television broadcasting and many other market developments, notes Matt Kolon, senior manager for technical solutions marketing at Juniper. These include a multichassis TX Matrix solution to expansion that allows service providers to add new T series core routers to existing routers using the TX Matrix front end to combine them all into a single platform that scales to multiterabit rates.

Scalability has become a key benchmark in the competition among all the core router vendors. Avici, for example, says its TSR router platform supports in-service scalability to more than 5 terabits per second.

Non-stop routing is also an important innovation driving carrier confidence in core routers, In-Stat’s Goldberg says. “This has become key to accommodating increased capacity for many suppliers,” he adds, citing Avici’s core and Alcatel’s edge techniques as prime examples of how this is done. In both cases, hot-standby protection allows carriers to maintain five-nine’s availability in a single router.

But carriers are looking for more than outstanding performance at the physical network layer, and this is where core router vendors are hoping their platforms make the difference as major carriers make their purchase decisions. By adding advanced functions as well as scalability to the core, vendors are opening a cost-effective migration path for service providers to follow in the transition to all-IP services, which allows them to postpone implementation of multiservice edge routers in many instances. “It’s a logical migration path to work from the core without making the IP/MPLS infrastructure visible to your customers,” says Juniper’s Kolon. “But the core must be able to provide carriers the option to offer that visibility as demand profiles change across the marketplace.”

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