Alcatel-Lucent's 'God Box'

With the launch of its new optical switch, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has reestablished its leadership position in optical infrastructure and taken a significant technological step forward in multi-terabit switches based on the Optical Transport Network group of standards. Equally important, the vendor joins a group of network infrastructure makers who in the last year have given operators facing rapidly increasing video and mobile data traffic a powerful set of options for upgrading their networks.

A key element of the company’s Converged Backbone Transformation, Alcatel-Lucent’s roadmap for fully integrated packet-optical transport, the new 1870 Transport Tera Switch (TTS) – which will go on sale around the middle of 2010 – is easily the highest-capacity optical switch released to date. Based on a chip developed by ALU that can handle a mix of traffic types at 1 Tbps, the 1870 TTS boasts a universal switching matrix with a maximum capacity of 4 Tbps in a single chassis in its first iteration, with later upgrades that will reach capacities of 8 Tbps. (The highest capacity rival, the Ciena 5430 RSS, has a capacity of 3.6 Tbps.)

The universal matrix, pointed out Alberto Valsecchi, VP of marketing for ALU's optical division, is able to switch any mix of OTN, SONET-SDH and Carrier Ethernet traffic on a single platform.

“Faced with an explosion of traffic often called ‘the exaflood challenge,’ the industry has acknowledged the need for additional cap for bandwidth management and optical switching,” added Valsecchi.

The optical switching element is critical: Today, long-haul carrier networks use expensive core routers to transport IP packet traffic. Adding more routers to handle the surge in bandwidth demand is a costly and power-hungry approach. With OTN, an ITU standard for encapsulating, switching and transporting multiple data types over an optical signal, they can offload much of that traffic to less expensive optical switches. “OTN adds a new network layer,” wrote Ovum research director Ron Kline in a note on the 1870 TTS, “but improves the network’s ability to efficiently handle packet traffic.”

That’s why many international carriers have publicly expressed their intention to move toward an architecture that combines IP-packet transport with optical switching. Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) last year put out a Request for Information (RFI) in which it specifically asked vendors to come up with solutions that combine packet and optical transport. That RFI will likely be followed by a more formal Request for Proposals (RFP) early this year. Other tenders from major carriers are expected to follow.

Alcatel-Lucent thus joins Ciena, Huawei, and startup Cyan Optics in the small group of vendors that have released integrated packet-optical transport switches in the last year. This movement is bringing to a head an important strategic choice for carriers in the next couple of years: whether to move toward an integrated packet-optical networks, offloading large amounts of traffic from costly core routers, or to stick with a router-centric architecture based on IP over dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM).

With its strong roots in both IP routing and optical switching, ALU is one of the few vendors that can claim to provide market-leading solutions for either type of architecture.

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