Alcatel Brings Carrier-Class to IP World with Alcatel
7420 Edge Services Router; New Product Means Higher
Margins, More Satisfied Customers for ISPs
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA--NOVEMBER 8, 2000 - 08:24 EST
Building on its leadership position as a
provider of carrier-class networking solutions, Alcatel
(Paris:CGEP.PA)(NYSE:ALA) today introduced an edge services
router that establishes new wirespeed performance levels for
broadband, differentiated business Internet protocol (IP)
services.
The Alcatel 7420 Edge Services Router (ESR) is the world's first
carrier-class edge services router with the intelligence,
scalability and reliability to deliver dedicated and
differentiated business IP services at wirespeed.
"We have been testing the 7420 Edge Services Router since June and
are very pleased," said Tim Lance, President of NYSERNet, a
provider of next-generation Internet services designed to enable
the goals of the education and research community in New York
State. "So far we've exercised several of the most critical
subsystems, including the PoS interfaces, the BGP router and the
Command Line Interface. Successful interoperation with similar
class routers of other vendors has been demonstrated. The level of
support received from the Alcatel team has been exceptional. We
look forward to working with them in testing additional features
as they become available."
Designed for broadband speeds and high utilization, the Alcatel
7420 takes advantage of distributed network processors to
implement the most complex, policy-based IP services while
maintaining full wirespeed forwarding performance (for example,
OC-12 and OC-48). This innovative architecture gives the Alcatel
7420 the scalability to increase capacity cost-effectively with
high-density port counts. Both features are maintained on a
"non-stop networking" platform that is designed to meet the rigid
standards of service providers.
"The big opportunity in this market is in offering advanced,
value-added IP services," said Michael Kennedy, Network Strategy
Partners. "Based upon our extensive research with leading edge
service providers, we think that the Alcatel 7420 Edge Services
Router has achieved the unique balance of performance and
intelligence that providers have been looking for to deliver these
services."
Business customers are adopting IP for their mission-critical
business support systems to save money and simplify the network
services they buy. The ability to create differentiated business
IP services enables service providers to differentiate themselves
and increases customer retention and service margins.
"The introduction of the Alcatel 7770 Routing Core Platform and
the 7420 Edge Services Router, both based upon network processor
technology, will make Alcatel a credible vendor in the service
provider IP router market," said David Passmore, Research
Director, The Burton Group. "We think Alcatel is a player to watch
and expect them to become much more visible in this space."
"We expect the North American ESR equipment market to be US$20B by
the year 2003 with significant opportunities for new entrants that
can demonstrate the technical superiority of their products," said
Bob Larribeau, director, Edge Switching and Routing at RHK, Inc.
"Service providers will favor edge routers built upon the
scalability, reliability, performance and intelligence needed to
overcome the limitations of today's IP networks."
The 7420 enables carriers to aggregate thousands of high speed,
dedicated business IP lines in a low cost and smaller footprint,
and its scalable architecture permits growth in a near-linear
price model. In addition, the distributed network processor
architecture enables feature enhancement and standards compliance
updates via software downloads, thereby extending the life of the
product without costly and intrusive physical swap outs.
"The 7420 expands Alcatel's proven leadership in reliable,
carrier-grade solutions by now allowing ISPs to offer service
guarantees for mission critical IP business services," said Barry
Denroche, Vice President and General Manager, of Alcatel's Edge
Data Networks. "Network operators can deploy the most
sophisticated IP services without compromising packet forwarding
performance. And they can do so at the same price they would pay
for our competitors' products, but receive all the added benefits
of the 7420."
The Alcatel 7420 Edge Services Router will begin in-service trials
in Q1 2001 with volume shipping in Q2. Pricing for a fully
configured and redundant system is $500 per T-1 (list price in
US$).
Industry Supporters
"The Alcatel 7420, with its high availability features,
sophisticated VPN support, and extensible network processor
architecture, offers many of the key capabilities we seek," said
Dr. Rick Bubenik, CTO of SAVVIS Communications. Alcatel's approach
is very complementary to SAVVIS' Intelligent IP networking
strategy, which brings the benefits of high-end private networks
to small and medium-sized businesses, while also enabling the
Fortune 1000 to be more nimble in the execution of their
e-commerce strategies."
Dr. Rick Bubenik is executive vice president of network
engineering at SAVVIS Communications, a leading national Internet
and networking service provider. Throughout his career, Dr.
Bubenik has been involved with the latest in ATM and
switching/routing technologies, beginning with his research on
switching fabrics at Washington University in the mid-1980s. In
the early part of his career, he worked on developing one of the
first commercial ATM products, and later received four patents on
switching/routing technologies while employed at Ascom Nexion.
"CoreExpress has created a new Internet Core network that enables
ISPs of all sizes to transfer data in a guaranteed quality of
service manner from city to city and between customer site to
customer site regardless of which ISP serves the initiating or
terminating customers," said Mike Gaddis, president and CEO of
CoreExpress "This service, targeted at business customers of the
Internet, will create a demand for ISP edge routers that can
converse in the language of IP QoS. ISPs, to compete in the future
business-enabled Internet, will need devices like the 7420 to
provide intelligent IP edge routing services."
About Alcatel IP
Alcatel has extensive design and development expertise in X.25,
TDM, frame relay, ATM and SONET-based equipment. The recently
launched Alcatel 7770 Routing Core Platform and Alcatel 7420 Edge
Services Router, combined with the existing IP, DWDM and optical
product range -- and all managed by a world-leading network and
services management suite -- now equips Alcatel to offer advanced
networking solutions to IP-centric service providers.
About Alcatel
Alcatel builds next generation networks, delivering integrated
end-to-end voice and data networking solutions to established and
new carriers, as well as enterprises and consumers worldwide. With
120,000 employees and sales of EURO 23 billion in 1999, Alcatel
operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit
Alcatel on the Internet: alcatel.com |
