Alcatel Enhances 7670 Routing Switch Platform

Alcatel is now shipping release 2 of its popular 7670 Routing Switch Platform for first customer applications. This second version adds gigabit Ethernet and packet over SONET interfaces and through its multishelf architecture enables carrier customers to scale the product from 2.4gbps at the multiservice edge to 50-450 gbps at the multiprotocol core.

Hundreds of the first release of the 7670, which came available a year ago, have already been shipped. Customers include British Telecom plc (www.bt.com), France Telecom (http://www.francetelecom.com) and Bell Canada (www.bell.ca) among others, says Jim Guillet, assistant vice president of the Switched Data Networks business unit at Alcatel (www.alcatel.com). ATM, MPLS and IP were all available in the initial release of the product, which was positioned as a 50gbps multiprotocol core node. That first release offered ATM interfaces only, to tie in with ATM switches and MPLS routers, explains Guillet.

“So now we’ve added the ability to go to 450gbps, with many many increments in between and price points accordingly,” he says. “At the same time we’ve moved this into the edge and introduced new shelves in release 2.”

The new shelves include an edge services extender, which is for low speed multiservice interfaces – typically OC3 or T1.

There are also new ATM, packet over SONET and gigabit Ethernet blades for the 50gig shelf made available with release 2.

Also new is a high-speed peripheral shelf offering OC192 connectivity. There is no OC192 card in release 2, but rather a four-port OC48 card. A OC192 card is planned for a future release of the 7670.

And new switching shelves provide the 50-450gbps of switching throughput. “It’s now outboard and we’ve extended the backplane to peripheral shelves to make it more LEGO-like,” says Guillet, referring to the popular LEGO snap-together children’s blocks.

That means the system can be added to as needed over time, allowing customers to delay capital expenditure until demand requires it and protecting their investment.

Also, he adds, the edge services extender can be used as a standalone box providing 2.5gbps. This would be used primarily to offer frame relay or private line services in wireline networks. It could also be used by mobile operators to consolidate voice traffic on a packet network. Or it could act as a media gateway to provide an interface between PSTN and packet networks, he says.

Guillet believes release 2 positions Alcatel particularly well in the multiservices switch space. Nortel Networks Ltd.’s Passport Series 15000 switches were the company’s biggest competitor for release 1 of the 7670, he says. “But now with our release 2, Nortel is playing catch up because it has not yet announced its next generation product. There is talk of a Passport 20000, but no details yet of what it is.” Lucent Technologies Inc. (wwww.lucent.com), meanwhile, has the GX 550 multiservice switch, but it’s a pure ATM switch. Lucent had offered a product called the MSC 25000, which was expected to support MPLS in future iterations, but recently dropped development on that product and has yet to announce the planned replacement. Cisco Systems Inc.’s (www.cisco.com) MGX 8850 IP+ATM switch is the closest product that vendor has to Alcatel’s 7670, says Guillet, but Cisco has yet to announce how it will scale beyond 22.5gig.

There are also what Guillet refers to as “niche competitors” Marconi Corporation plc (www.marconi.com) and Ericsson (www.ericsson.com) as well as smaller vendors Équipe Communications Corp. (www.equipcom.com), Gotham Networks Inc. (www.gothamnetworks.com), Tenor Networks (www.tenornetworks.com) and WaveSmith Networks Inc. (www.wavesmithnetworks.com). But Guillet notes the Alcatel has more financial stability, a stronger sales force and support team than many of those competitors can offer.

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