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Please contact:
Jeff Claudino
Director of Sales, Insider Research Services
619-229-9940
or via email at:
claudino@lightreading.com |
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| Control Planes: Key to Winning the Carrier Ethernet Metro War |
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The core network currently belongs to IP/MPLS router vendors. Nearly all suppliers of carrier Ethernet switching gear accept this, but they do not believe it will always be the case. On the contrary, metro networking is at a critical phase of evolution.
Within the metro network environment, vendors offer a range of infrastructure choices. All are promoting a move from legacy infrastructures such as Sonet/SDH, and a great many are promoting Ethernet as a suitable transport mechanism. However, the next-generation technologies underpinning the Ethernet transport network differ greatly: Some vendors promote Ethernet over optical (native Ethernet), some Ethernet over IP/MPLS, and still others Ethernet over Transport MPLS (T-MPLS). And there are other flavors, too.
At one stage, it was taken for granted that IP/MPLS would be extended from core networks out into metro and aggregation transport network environments, underpinning everything from core to access. However, progress in making Ethernet carrier-class, technology evolution through the development of provider backbone bridges (PBB) and more recently traffic-engineered provider backbone bridges (PBB-TE), and progress with the T-MPLS standard have all given other vendors a real opportunity to capture market share with an alternative. And they are working hard to make the most of it.
All of this is happening against a backdrop in which carriers are looking to cut costs and develop new service offerings by integrating separate circuit- and packet-switched networks onto one packet-switched aggregation and metropolitan infrastructure. In doing so, they need to be able to support the range and quality of the new types of services on offer. They also need to sustain services typically provided over circuit-switched architecture, matching the levels of configurability, reliability, and resiliency that customers demand.
Providers of all these technologies have therefore had to convince network operators that their technology offerings meet resiliency, service quality, flexibility of service delivery, and scaleability requirements. Consequently, vendors of both switches and routers have been engaged in a marketing war designed to prove that their own solutions work best. As is the case in the real world, there is no perfect solution. All of the available options have unique pros and cons.
The latest salvos have revolved around the control plane's role and how services are provisioned and managed end to end within a network. The control plane has been at the heart of the debate. For instance, Nortel has recently positioned provider link state bridging (PLSB) as an ideal control plane for PBB-TE, Juniper has announced a separate control-plane solution for its routers, and various switch vendors have announced partnerships with off-port control-plane providers.
Control Planes: Key to Winning the Carrier Ethernet Metro War compares the principal carrier Ethernet transport alternatives (IP/MPLS, T-MPLS, and native carrier Ethernet) and explores the role of the control plane in carrier Ethernet infrastructure, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the multiple competing control-plane strategies. The report also profiles three leading control-plane technology vendors and evaluates the carrier Ethernet transport network and control-plane positioning of 16 router and switch vendors.
Control Planes: Key to Winning the Carrier Ethernet Metro War provides critical insight and analysis for a range of industry participants, including:
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Network operators needing an independent evaluation of carrier Ethernet technology developments and strategies for deployment in the metro |
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Technology suppliers assessing the potential size of the metro carrier Ethernet market opportunity and their relative market position compared with their main competitors |
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Investors needing a better understanding of the scale of the opportunity various carrier Ethernet technology options present to technology suppliers and network operators |
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| Sample research data from the report is shown in the excerpts below: |
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 Table of Contents (lri0308toc.pdf) |
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| The available carrier Ethernet transport technologies reflect competing ideologies. Some vendors want next-generation packet-switched networks to closely emulate legacy circuit-switched technologies, making them deterministic, highly resilient, and with a high degree of operator control. Others argue that packet-switched networks should have a high level of distributed intelligence, offering restoration and using the distributed intelligence to determine routing and bandwidth utilization. And there is a spectrum of approaches between these extremes. The excerpt below shows some of the advantages and disadvantages vendors attribute to the three main approaches. |
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| [click on the image above for the full excerpt] |
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| The following excerpt summarizes the carrier Ethernet transport network and control-plane positioning of major router and switch vendors (company names redacted). |
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| [click on the image above for the full excerpt] |
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 Companies analyzed in this report include: Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU); Aria Networks Ltd.; Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN); Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO); ECI Telecom Ltd. (Nasdaq: ECIL); Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC); Extreme Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR); Foundry Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY); Gridpoint Systems Inc.; Hammerhead Systems Inc.; Iskratel Telecommunications Systems Ltd.; Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR); Meriton Networks Inc.; MRV Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: MRVC); Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture of Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE); Soapstone Networks, a subsidiary of Avici Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: AVCI); Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE: NT); Tellabs Inc. (Nasdaq: TLAB; Frankfurt: BTLA); and World Wide Packets Inc. |
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| Total pages: 25 |
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| To view reports you will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader. If you do not have it, it can be obtained for free at the Adobe web site. |
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