Riverstone revs up metro
Nortel readies WDM for prime time
Multiservice start-ups Equipe, WaveSmith make progress
Quarry mines VPN, firewall treasures
Lucent's early optimism fades, issues financial warning
NEC rolls out metro products
More news
New router module supports Cisco technology.
By Terri Gimpelson
The Edge, 03/18/02
SANTA CLARA - Riverstone Networks has begun migrating its routers toward support of an emerging metropolitan Ethernet standard.
The company unveiled an OC-48c Spatial Reuse Protocol (SRP) interface module for its RS 8000 and 8600 metropolitan routers in an effort to begin the move to the evolving Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) standard. SRP is the underpinning of Cisco's proprietary metropolitan IP offerings, and will be a key component of the IEEE 802.17 RPR, which is expected to be ratified in about a year.
RPR will define a new media access control layer protocol, optimized specifically for metropolitan-area networks. Its proponents claim it can carry voice and time-division multiplexed traffic with SONET-like resiliency, and Ethernet traffic as efficiently as native Ethernet.
Advertisement:
Riverstone says its implementation of SRP delivers all the benefits of the eventual RPR standard, including the ability for carriers to offer Ethernet services that look and act like SONET and ATM. SRP utilizes a dual counter-rotating ring in which both rings concurrently carry data and control messages in an effort to maximize bandwidth.
Each data packet has a correlating control packet that is sent on a counter-rotating ring.
Riverstone says it hopes its Cisco-compatible SRP implementation will speed up the adoption of the eventual standard and says it feels confident that carriers' traditional discomfort with prestandard technologies will be sated by the fact that SRP is already deployed. Cisco says there are 200 customers for its Dynamic Packet Ring technology, the company's proprietary precursor to RPR that is based on SRP.
"This isn't an either/or situation" between SRP and RPR, says Mark Landry, director of strategic marketing for Riverstone. "It's really just an interim solution, and it's what carriers have said they want and what they're comfortable with."
Instead of being vilified as a Cisco proprietary technology, SRP was legitimized after the IEEE endorsed it by including it with a submission by Nortel in the most recent proposal for the final RPR standard.
"The more carriers see the value and the support behind SRP, the more we will see them beginning to implement this prestandard technology," says Marian Stasney, a senior analyst of carrier convergence for The Yankee Group.
"Service provider interest in RPR is extremely high, but carriers know that there won't be any RPR-enabled products available until next summer," Stasney says. "The industry needs prestandard products out there to work out the kinks of an upcoming standard."
Riverstone's OC-48c SRP module uses pluggable optical media connectors, which are removable adapters that allow for network expansion without having to replace an entire line card. The adapters also support different fiber distances, from 1 1/4 to 46 1/2 miles.
With this module, Riverstone routers can operate on dark fiber or be overlaid onto SONET. A complete node requires two line cards that are linked by a single-port bridge module.
One card is configured for transport on an outer ring and reception on an inner ring. The other card is configured in the opposite manner.
Riverstone's new single-port module is the first of a three-phased migration toward RPR. It currently supports only Layer 3 protocols.
The second phase of the implementation is scheduled for the fourth quarter. At that time, the module will support Layer 2 protocols and virtual LANs.
Phase 3, expected in the second half of next year, will be a single-port OC-192c module that fully complies with the RPR standard, Riverstone says.
Stasney says Riverstone's choice to implement SRP only on its OC-48c platform is a way for the company to test the waters and ease into the market.
"During a time when everybody, including Riverstone, is planning for layoffs, they are doing a phased approach to SRP implementation," she says. "That's really smart because they're not doing anything that can't be undone if need be."
Pricing for the OC-48c SRP card starts at $33,500, and depends on the type of optical connectors. The module is available now.
Migration to RPR
Riverstone’s new module initiates product evolution to the metro Ethernet standard.
Key features:
• Implements RFC 2892 Spatial Reuse Protocol via OC-48c/STM-16 RPR/SRP card.
• Uses pluggable optical media connectors
to support different fiber distances.
• Prices start at $33,500, depending on optical connectors.
• Complete node requires two modules interconnected with a bridge module.
• Works over dark fiber or can be overlaid onto SONET.
Riverstone released an RPR/SRP module for its RS 8600, top, and 8000 metro routers. |
