some good reading, extract from oct lan times magazine
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Router revolution
raises QoS questions
Next-generation startups to rev Internet to
unprecedented speeds but choose different
approaches for traffic prioritization
By Brett Mendel
new crop of high-speed routers will soon be
giving the Internet infrastructure an overhaul,
but differing technological approaches among the
vendors could complicate the delivery of
interoperability and Quality of Service across the
Internet's backbone.
The high-bandwidth routing products started
shipping last month, with the long-awaited delivery
of startup Juniper Networks Inc.'s M40, a device
with a 20Gbps routing capacity. Other newcomers
such as NetCore Systems Inc. and Argon Networks
Inc. are also making progress toward the respective
first quarter and second quarter releases of their
high-end devices.
Earlier this month, NetCore announced a set of
features in its Everest Integrated Switch that will
allow ATM- and IP-based traffic to be supported
on one switch. Everest is due in beta at the end of
October.
Argon disclosed at the ISPcon trade show earlier
this month that its GigaPacket Node will include a
family of Multi-Service Channelized interfaces that
will be capable of supporting IP and ATM traffic
simultaneously.
Each of the devices, along with Cisco Systems'
12000 series routers and Lucent Technologies Inc.'s
forthcoming PacketStar IP Switch--which is due in
the first half of next year--are among the new
products vying for a space in ISP and carrier
networks that will comprise the next-generation
Internet backbone.
Despite the wide array of developing standards and
proprietary technologies associated with these
high-end routers, the constant need for bandwidth
on the Internet may not give many network
managers much time to weigh interoperability.
"That's the problem on [the] table--we're always
scaling up rapidly," said Rick Wilder, director of
advanced Internet engineering at MCI Worldcom
Corp. in Reston, Va.
The company is testing devices from Juniper, Cisco,
and Lucent--and soon another startup, Avici
Systems Inc.--for use in various parts of its network.
For example, the VBNS (Very High Performance
Backbone Network Service) that MCI operates for
the National Science Foundation currently runs on
OC-12 (622Mbps)-capable routers, which will be
replaced with ones that support OC-48 (2.5Gbps)
lines.
Juniper's M40 contains eight OC-48 ports, for a
total routed capacity of 20Gbps. However, the
company touts the device's specially developed
Internet Processor as a key factor in its speed. The
processor can handle 40 million packets per second,
100 times the speed of Cisco 12000 routers,
according to Juniper officials.
Competitors are instead measuring performance by
overall interface capacity. Argon's GigaPacket
Node and NetCore's Everest Integrated Switch can
terminate 160Gbps and 640Gbps worth of OC-48
lines, respectively--compared to the 60Gbps of the
Cisco 12000 and 40Gbps of Lucent's PacketStar.
That type of capacity may soon be important to
service providers such as MCI. Although it is
comfortable installing new devices that scale to
20Gbps, the company wonders how long that will
last.
"It's easy to see when we'll have to go bigger than
that," said MCI's Wilder. |
