Fujitsu’s packet optical platform goes PBT

Fujitsu Network Communications announced support for Provider Backbone Bridging - Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) in its year-old packet optical networking platform today, saying it will now recommend the connection-oriented Layer 2 technology over other transport methods in metro networks.

When Fujitsu unveiled the Flashwave 9500 packet optical platform last year -- to help carriers migrate from Sonet to Ethernet, using wavelengths as the mediator -- the vendor said it would eventually include support for Provider Backbone Transport (or what was at the time commonly called PBT, but which standards bodies now refer to as PBB-TE) but that it would start with a focus on MPLS with pseudowires as its transport method of choice. Pseudowire, a method of emulating circuits over packet-based networks, was simply more mature at that point, Rod Naphan, Fujitsu’s vice president of planning, said at the time. “It's ready sooner.”

But now that the vendor has introduced 480 Gb/s PBB-TE cards for the 9500, it will recommend that option for carriers over pseudowires, Fujitsu said.

“Our platform is capable of supporting different approaches,” said Sam Lisle, Fujitsu’s director of market development. “But right now, PBB-TE is our direction. That’s what we feel has the most significant benefits.”

According to Fujitsu, those benefits include a lower operations cost owing to the relative simplicity of PBB-TE. For example, it doesn’t require new expertise for transport operations staff, it includes fewer layers to manage and troubleshoot, and it reduces the size and complexity of the routed network.

Although PBB-TE isn’t known to have been deployed by tier-one carriers in North America, Lisle said there is “a lot of interest” among those carriers in PBB-TE for metro networks.

PBB-TE will be available on the Flashwave early next year, Fujitsu said, but, for “some customers,” it will be available later this year.

Fujitsu is widely believed to have sold Verizon on the 9500 late last year or early this year.

Separately this week, Fujitsu announced a new two-slot, two-rack-unit-high edge and customer premises platform to accompany the 9500. The Flashwave CDS, available in the first quarter, offers aggregation of Ethernet and legacy time-division services. A forthcoming second release of the CDS, whose arrival date is not set, will likely include support for PBB-TE, but it may not be a popular feature, Fujitsu said, as PBB-TE -- with its reduction of traffic addresses -- works better among a limited number of nodes in the metro than it does among thousands of points along the network’s edge.