Any soothsayer on thread?
Who's gonna be Prince Loo's partner re modem cesspool?
Lucent Dives Deeper Into Data Networking
By Peter Lambert
1:30 PM EDT
Lucent Technologies Inc. will unveil a next-generation service provider backbone switch optimized for Internet traffic, one of more than a half dozen new products that will comprise a full data networking portfolio over the next 18 months, officials of the leading telephone network equipment supplier said.
Other data-friendly Lucent products in development: a multiservice edge switch, digital-analog access concentrators, a multilayer routing switch, a virtual private network (VPN) bandwidth manager and servers for Internet telephony, security and domain name services. The company also is developing a new generation of Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) equipment more tightly integrated with Internet and other data protocols.
Through the combination of access, switching and routing technologies, "the potential is to provision all services from one platform," said Kevin Oye, director of strategic business development and architecture for Lucent's Business Communications unit.
The redesigned GlobeView-2000 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switch will be delivered to the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories this year and made generally available at the end of the first quarter, 1998.
It will feature 622-Megabit-per-second SONET ports, expanded data buffers and a new switching fabric optimized for Internet Protocol (IP) traffic. Those improvements will enable service providers to offer bandwidth-on-demand Switched Virtual Circuits (SVCs), which are well suited to deliver wide-area VPN services to businesses, said Harry Bosco, president of Lucent's Broadband Networking Business unit.
"We're treating service providers and enterprises as one business," he said. "There's a blurring of product development for each market, and we want the flexibility to be able to move as the boundary moves between enterprise and service provider."
Ultimately, Lucent intends to integrate data networking products, most of which are software based, into its existing 5E telephone central office switches.
"Lucent will play in the Internet space, and we expect to reduce service provider costs by putting these functions right into the 5E," Bosco said. "A lot of our customers have three or four networks, and they're trying to get them together. That's the problem we're trying to solve."
Lucent is expected to soon announce a modem pool product partnership,
as well as integration of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line high-speed phone-line access into what it is now calling its 5E AnyMedia Switch. |
