ALCATEL BULKS UP ROUTER LINE

Alcatel this week will announce a series of new features on its 7450 Ethernet Service Switch and 7750 Service Router aimed at both speeding up the rollout of triple-play services and increasing the reliability of business virtual private networks.

Among the more interesting enhancements to the portfolio is the ability to use multicasting for IPTV distribution and automated per-subscriber security policies. Also, the company is adding features on the 7750 router to make it the first multiservice edge router to deliver Layer 2 and Layer 3 services, including Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), IP VPNs, high-speed Internet, ATM and frame relay.

The objective is in part to increase the reliability of video services.

“The TV and video is what we could consider lifestyle-critical services,” said Lindsay Newell, vice president of marketing for Alcatel, IP division, noting the different expectations of customers. “When I'm working at home on my DSL connection, I sort of tolerate if it's out every once in a while. That expectation goes away when you layer on voice and video.”

Alcatel, which is the lead vendor for SBC Communications' Project Lightspeed, also is trying to give carriers options for bandwidth savings on the video side. Using multicasting and support for IP Messaging Group, the vendor is sketching out a network in which only the most popular channels are streamed to the DSLAM that sits nearest the home user. Less frequently requested channels are streamed only to large aggregation points or not at all (see figure).

“If you broadcast 500 channels all the way down to every DSLAM, that's a gig of bandwidth between every DSLAM and the 7450,” Newell said. “You want to avoid sending BBC America to 10,000 people when only people like me watch it.”

In business applications, the vendor is touting the addition of new features that will allow both the 7450 and the 7750 to recover in 4 milliseconds in case of outage . Using dual planes, the company is able to switch traffic and make it imperceptible to the user, Newell said.

Masergy, a Plano, Texas-based carrier, has been using the 7750 for some time and is hoping the improved reliability can translate directly into reduced cost.

“Anything that can stop a customer from calling us is a huge win from an opex point of view,” said Jim Brunetti, director of IP engineering for Masergy. The multicast capabilities also are noteworthy, he said.

“Our customers are using multicast in a private network environment to do things like Bloomberg TV or broadcast CEO speeches,” Brunetti said.