Lucent takes direct aim at Cisco,
Ascend with giant IP switch
By David Rohde
Network World Fusion, 5/28/98
Lucent Technologies, Inc. yesterday proved as good
as its word - it's going to compete tooth and nail with
top data vendors to provide giant IP switching
capacity.
The telecom equipment giant unveiled the PacketStar
IP Switch, a carrier-class Layer 3/Layer 4 routing
switch that potentially provides thousands of different
levels of service quality for IP applications.
The PacketStar switch delivers up to 32 million
packet/sec with 128G bit/sec of total backplane
capacity. It initially will be sold to carriers and ISPs
that are also being targeted by Cisco Systems, Inc.
with its 12000 Gigabit Switch Router, unveiled about
a year ago.
Bill O'Shea, president of Lucent's Data Networking
Division, said that new Bell Laboratories-developed
algorithms enable the PacketStar switch to support up
to 64,000 separate traffic queues. As a result, carriers
who install the switch in their networks could assign
numerous service levels - everything from "virtual
leased lines" with nearly guaranteed continuous
throughput down to pure best-effort service - to
different queues and standardize them as service
offerings to customers.
The key to Lucent's approach is that by going to
Layer 4, the switch will examine each packet for the
TCP protocol as well as the IP header. As a result, it
will base traffic decisions on such application-oriented
information as the "type of service" bit, explained
Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications
Network Architects, Inc., a consulting firm in
Washington, D.C.
"It will look at the entire header, including what
precedes the IP header, and execute based on what's
in the actual content of the packet," Dzubeck said.
For example, the switch could automatically recognize
that the traffic is an IP telephony call, a video stream
or an extremely delay-sensitive terminal-to-host
session. If so, it would give the traffic a clean path
through the IP network, while more delay-tolerant file
transfers and messages wait.
By contrast, the Cisco 12000 GSR looks at a
predefined set of six to eight "precedence bits" that
roughly indicate the priority of each packet, Dzubeck
said. Both Lucent and Cisco are claiming the ability to
scale up to terabit speeds for upcoming releases of
their respective IP switching platforms.
Lucent officials called the PacketStar switch
"revolutionary," but end-user benefits - in terms of
new carrier and ISP services keyed off the switch -
could be a ways off. "The carriers are going to waltz
into this," Dzubeck cautioned. "The trials are going to
last a long time." To try to move carriers along more
quickly, Lucent also announced new large-capacity IP
access servers to compete with products such as
those from Ascend Communications, Inc. that are
popular with ISPs, as well as voice-to-data gateways.
The new IP products are significant for Lucent
because, until now, its data networking strategy has
been heavily focused on ATM switches for the
enterprise and carriers.
Some large ISPs and Internet backbone providers are
antagonistic toward ATM because they consider the
protocol to contain a "cell tax" - a 5-byte header on
every 53-byte cell, regardless of whether the payload
is voice, data or video - and thus wasteful of
bandwidth.
Lucent began diversifying away from ATM in the
local area with its purchase last year of Prominet
Corp., a Gigabit Ethernet switch vendor. Analysts
said yesterday's announcement proves Lucent is eager
to pursue both ATM and native IP strategies
side-by-side in the enterprise WAN and carrier
markets, just as it will be offering both ATM and
high-speed Ethernet switching in LANs and campus
networks.
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although a little old, this is an interesting and significant.
LU won several large contracts that include this Packet Star. Based on performance and now with large customer acceptance, LU is now eating and will eat CSCO big lunches. IMO, LU will have tremendous growth considering all these data market is extra and in addition to the telecom area. IMO, LU at this price is a great buy. |
