Caspian refines QoS classes

Caspian Networks today announced the launch of a flow-based router that brings ATM-equivalent quality of service to IP networks without the associated cost or overhead.

Dubbed Apeiro, the line is based on a new architecture that lets carriers begin to offer ATM-type services over an infrastructure that is purely IP-based.

“Service providers see the need to deploy very deterministic services like ATM, but over a native IP infrastructure,” said Faizel Lakhani, vice president of marketing for Caspian. They want to to offer these in a language that the customer understands, so they can turn it on and off as needed.”

What makes Apeiro different, though, is its ability to parcel out quality of service levels, he said. While most routers can provide various QoS levels, within each class, “everything is best effort. All the VoIP streams collide. The way voice service providers typically solve this is by throwing more capacity at it.”

Under the new architecture, data flows are assigned based on specific rules that allow a much finer granulation of QoS. Additionally, the company says its approaches ensure fairness and call rejection for every microflow, even under heavy load conditions. The result is a router that can scale to a much larger network without the need to increase raw capacity, Lakhani said.

Key to that capability is a custom ASIC chip that processes significantly faster than previous generations.

“We can set up in excess of 500,000 to 1 million flows per second per 10 gigabit link,” Lakhani said.