27 May 2003 London Lightwave -- Tellabs today announced the second phase of its data migration strategy, adding Layer 2 switching and guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS) to its next-generation SDH portfolio. Available this quarter, the new Tellabs 6300 managed transport series enables operators to support advanced Ethernet private networks, providing differentiated carrier-class data services to their business customers.
"The integration of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) takes SDH into a very strong evolution path for the optical network," asserts Mark Lum, director of RHK's Optical Networks: Europe program. "This approach merits the most serious business consideration from multi-service providers and network operators." RHK believes that Tellabs is the first vendor to deliver MPLS-managed Layer 2 Virtual Private Networks (VPN) services on a single SDH platform that also features Generic Framing Procedure
(GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCX), and Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) resiliency.
The Tellabs 6300 Ethernet solution uses MPLS to provide a guaranteed QoS not available with standard Ethernet equipment. Instead of relying on simple Ethernet prioritization mechanisms, the Tellabs 6300 series manages and delivers the committed bandwidth within a multipoint network for each data flow.
"With the addition of Layer 2 switching to our Tellabs 6300 managed transport series, Tellabs becomes the first vendor to deliver Ethernet-over-SDH solutions combining GFP mapping, LCAS resiliency, and MPLS-based end-to-end QoS on a single platform," contends Peter Viereck, vice president and general manager optical transport networks at
Tellabs. "Operators can currently start the evolution of the equipment that will enable them to support new profitable Ethernet services with greater operational expenditure and capital expenditure savings."
The Layer 2 switching functionality enables network operators to build large Ethernet networks over long distances, maintaining the flexibility and scalability of smaller data networks. Operators can offer highly flexible and differentiated services such as Ethernet VPNs or Ethernet Private Lines for applications including Internet access, business intranets, voice over IP, and video.
The use of MPLS enables managed over-subscription and allows operators to offer flexible, bandwidth-based Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to end customers while offering superior scalability, security, and customer segregation compared with Virtual Local Area Networks-based mechanisms (VLAN), say Tellabs representatives. With the transport network now contributing to the Layer 2 switching, the number of physical interfaces between the transport network and its data clients is considerably reduced, lowering the overall network costs.
Using LCAS in the Tellabs 6300 series, operators can resize the capacity of links in the transport network at any time without interrupting traffic, thereby allowing them to scale Ethernet service bandwidth instantly as required, says the company. Further, LCAS offers resiliency against network failure and can enable network efficiency to be doubled by utilizing the redundant bandwidth reserved by traditional SDH protection.