Globalcomm: Alcatel brings Ethernet MSPP to the U.S.

CHICAGO--Alcatel introduced the North American version of its Ethernet-centric multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP) at the Globalcomm trade show while touting new subscriber management features for its edge routing gear.

With the new 1850 Transport Service Switch--a proposed contrast to today’s fundamentally Sonet-based MSPPs--carriers can decide how many of the 12 10-Gb/s input/output cards in the chassis will be TDM-based and how many will be based on Ethernet or wavelength-division multiplexing. Because all the cards share a common universal switching fabric within the 100-Gb/s chassis, carriers avoid the need to map Ethernet over Sonet in the switching matrix and eliminate the bottleneck of interconnecting different cards or boxes that Sonet MSPPs sometimes require.

“[The 1850] is designed the way you’d design an Ethernet switch, with no architectural restrictions,” said Bruce Miller, Alcatel’s vice president of network strategy and advanced development.

Six customers are already trialing the product in North America, Alcatel said.

Miller called the 1850 TSS “the new entrant in a generation that follows” Alcatel’s 1603 Sonet multiplexer, which was acquired by Telmar Network Technology last fall.

“In the 1603, if I want do Ethernet, I put an Ethernet blade in,” he said. “That Ethernet blade would have a fixed set of features and capabilities. If I want to do anything outside that blade--go through the network, communicate with another blade--it’s all done through a Sonet backbone. [With the new 1850], if I want a bigger Ethernet switch, the fabric partitions to make all the 10-Gb/s cards talk together.”

Separately the company announced new features for its 7750 service router, one of the edge routing products that came from Alcatel’s acquisition of TiMetra. Alcatel has added non-stop multicast routing, in-service software upgrades and new subscriber management features. The non-stop multicasting function is meant to ensure quick recovery of broadcast video in the event of system failure. And the new subscriber management features allow carriers to automatically implement predefined quality of service policies for new subscribers.