Alcatel-Lucent set to challenge Cisco and Juniper in the core
Stuart Corner
Friday, 18 May 2012 10:50
Alcatel-Lucent will next week make its long-expected entry into the core router market - dominated almost entirely by Cisco and Juniper Networks - with a product based on its FP3 chipset announced last June.
The company is holding a two day technology symposium in Santa Clara at which it says it will unveil "a major breakthrough innovation in core networking." Commenting on the move Nomura Research's Stuart Jeffry, said: "Alcatel-Lucent has captured a 24 percent share of the edge router market over the past 10 years. If the company can launch a compelling solution and leverage its customer relationships then it may see faster share gains in the core routing market. Our analysis shows that a 10 percent core routing share would drive a six percent increase in our operating income forecast for 2014 (all else being equal) and a 20 percent share 14 percent upside to estimates."
The move into core routing was widely anticipated when Alcatel-Lucent last June announced a new 400Gbps chipset, the FP3, saying it would be used to boost edge router performance. The company said then that the new processor would be commercially available in mid 2012, initially in a range of new line cards for its 7750 SR series edge routers: 2 port - 100GE, 6 port - 40GE and 20 port 10GE cards.
Alcatel-Lucent said at the time: "The FP3 processor is designed to address tomorrow's demand for ultra-high performance public and private IP networks. For example, a single FP3 processor could handle 70,000 simultaneous high definition video streams or 8.4 million simultaneous retail cloud sessions."
Announcement of the FP3 immediately fuelled speculation that it would be used to build a core router. Interviewed at the FP3 launch by Light Reading, Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's IP Division, was asked: "Can we call you a core router company now?"
He replied: "You have asked me that many times...From a silicon point of view the FP3 has intercepted core silicon in performance...So we now have what is required to build core routers...However, core routing needs a few more pieces: multi chassis and those sort of things, and we are not announcing any of that today."
Ovum analyst David Krozier had no doubts. He said: "Ovum expects that Alcatel-Lucent is already developing a new platform based on the FP3 that has the capacity and feature set to extend the company's reach into the network core and compete directly in that market with Cisco and Juniper."
Alcatel-Lucent sourced a glowing endorsement of the FP3 from Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier and data centre networks at Infonetics Research. He said: "This 400G chipset is a generational advance that will improve router 100GE density/cost and will attract the eye of service providers...I'm impressed that any company could develop such a high capacity network processor, solving 400G in the electrical domain before the industry solves 400G for light waves."
In a detailed assessment of the FP3, entitled 'What the Next Gen of FP3 Silicon Really Means' published shortly after its announcement, Telecom Strategy Partners said it offered "ground breaking technical specs, but the market opportunity and cost competitiveness it enables are what is most impressive."
The report said it was "A significant development milestone that will serve as a foundation upon which service router product development will be based for the next five plus years, the FP3 network processor chip set targets operator requirements for scaling differentiated services with more dense and cost effective infrastructure, thereby supporting Alcatel-Lucent's applications enablement and high leverage networks strategy and positioning.
"The programmable nature of the FP3 design enables it to be custom tailored to the needs of different routing platforms over time, with new feature sets downloaded as they are developed. FP3 programmability and the different memory chips that complement the chipset mean that these network processors can be tailored to a variety of routing applications, enabling adaptation to the specific requirements of service routers for the edge or core routers in the Super Core."
iTWire's telecommunications editor, Stuart Corner, will attend the Alcatel-Lucent symposium as a guest of the company.
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