RiverDelta plans for cable’s open-access needs

(Telephony) While the cable industry tests and dreads the prospect of opening its networks to multiple ISPs, one vendor has taken steps to make the final reality a little more palatable, at least as far as the technology is concerned.

RiverDelta today introduced hardware-based Distributed-Policy Routing [DPR] that scales to support multiple ISPs and a Multiprotocol Label Switching [MPLS] per-flow control enables broadband operators to implement quality of service across their own networks and the backbones of multiple service providers.

"We're supporting the combination of three technologies," said Gerry White, RiverDelta's chief technical officer. "The first one is DHCP, which is the dynamic address allocation protocol."

In RiverDelta's approach, the DHCP server allocates each ISP's user an address from the ISP's address book.

RiverDelta has placed the second piece, Policy-Based Routing [PBR], into hardware with distributed packet processing to support multiple subscribers over multiple service networks.

"I can combine the fact that I know which service provider it is and I can look at what kind of services [the end user] wants and where he wants to go and make my routing decision on that more complex matrix," said White.

The third piece, MPLS, "lets me create a set of virtual networks on top of my physical infrastructure … and route the traffic to each of the appropriate virtual networks," said White.

An evolving standard, MPLS was the missing piece of RiverDelta's open-access solution, said marketing vice president Jeff Walker. It enables content-aware routing and eliminates the need for tunneling traffic flows from the access network to the core.

"MPLS lets us have a generic method that works for multiple physical infrastructure," Walker said. “MPLS can run over ATM, but it can also run over gigabit Ethernet, fast Ethernet, packet-over-SONET and so on. It's a nice addition to what we're doing.”

RiverDelta is trialing the new technology and plans a June introduction, Walker said. The new pieces are backward compatible with RiverDelta's existing cable-modem termination system [CMTS] and router products, he added.

"We're adding these two things into our advanced routing software package," Walker said. "Customers don't have to buy it if they're just going to do standard routing things, but if they're going to do advanced routing they would buy this package for $25,000."

It will also be offered as an upgrade to existing RiverDelta equipment, he said.

Although aimed primarily at service providers delivering open access to multiple ISPs, "you could just use it to extend you quality of service from the DOCSIS access network to the method and core networks," White concluded.