SBC OUTLINES FIBER AND DSL ACCESS STRATEGY
SBC Communications will begin installing Passive
Optical Network (PON) technology in select access
networks as a next step evolution beyond DSL and T1
copper. Speaking at Networld+Interop in Las Vegas,
Ross Ireland, Senior Executive Vice President of
Services and CTO of SBC, said that fiber is the long
term access solution for SBC, the nation’s largest
incumbent network operator. Recent advancements in
PON and WDM technology now make it economically
feasible to consider deploying fiber to the business
wherever there are two T1s of capacity, whereas last
year, economics dictated that copper be used
exclusively until the customer needed at least 45
Mbps capacity. SBC’s first PON installation will
take place in Houston, where it will move 1,000
business customers from copper to PON access this
year. The PON rollout is expected to reach 9,000
small business customers in 2002. SBC will use
technology developed in partnership with PACEON, a
subsidiary of Mitsubishi. For residential access,
SBC will also install PON in a new California
housing development. SBC’s strategy will be to
deploy PON as a complement to DSL. The company’s
Project Pronto initiative has now reached 90% of its
initial DSL availability targets. The company is
adding about 6,000 DSL subscribers per day, with 90%
of activations occurring through self-install kits
rather than truck rolls. Total SBC DSL
subscriptions are at 954,000. A total of 1,300
central offices are wired for DSL and 3,000
neighborhood DSL gateways are now installed. SBC
plans to increase this number of neighborhood DSL
concentrators to 5,000 by year’s end and to 17,000
by 2003, effectively ensuring that at least 80% of
its local loops will be within 12,000 feet of the
customer. This would allow SBC to scale DSL access
speeds to sufficient rates to offer broadcast
quality television services should the company
choose to enter the market. Ireland believes that
cable modem deployments will keep the same growth
rates as DSL, largely because cable modem service
has the competitive advantage of being mostly free
from regulation. While SBC will accelerate its
deployment of fiber in the feeder portion of its
network, Ireland commented that fully developing the
fiber access will depend on “a good regulatory
environment.”
May 9, 2001
- An archived
webcast of the keynote presentation is available
online
http://www.sbc.com/data/0,2951,35,00.html
- Last September,
SBC Communications gained approval from the FCC to
begin providing DSL through neighborhood broadband
gateways deployed as part of its $6 billion
Project Pronto initiative. SBC is required to
offer the service on a wholesale and
non-discriminatory basis to competitive local
exchange carriers (CLECs), including Advanced
Solutions Inc., its own data subsidiary. A month
earlier, SBC announced its first trials of DSL
provisioned through neighborhood gateways. Ten
CLECs were named as equal participants in the
trials, including its own data subsidiary. At the
time, SBC said it intended to activate
approximately 4,000 neighborhood gateways by
year-end 2001, and 18,000 by the end of 2002.
- PACEON was
established by Mitsubishi Electric in January 2000
to develop equipment for Full Service Access
Network systems based on ATM and Passive Optical
Network (PON) technology. The company is
headquartered in Duluth, Georgia.
http://www.mitsubishielectric.com/
NORTEL NETWORKS UNVEILS 10 GIGABIT ETHERNET SWITCH
Nortel
Networks’ Passport 8600 is a highly scalable central
office routing switch for delivering 10 Gigabit
Ethernet in metro networks. Chief attributes of the
platform include a NEBs-3 compliant central office
chassis and split-MLT (multi-link trunking)
functionality to drive 99.999% reliability and
enable multiple site redundancy. The Passport 8600
will scale to 128 Gbps of switching and be available
in either a 6-slot chassis or a 10-slot chassis. The
product will use ASIC-based forwarding to enable
wire-speed routing and filtering. The design allows
for redundant switch fabrics when redundancy is
desired. In addition to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, the
Passport 8600 will support a range of other
interfaces, including Fast Ethernet, Gigabit
Ethernet, Packet over SONET and ATM. Product
availability is scheduled for June 2001. China’s
Guangdong Unicom will be a lead customer to trial
the 10-GE compatible Passport 8600 product. The
company noted that its Optical Ethernet solutions
have now been implemented in 12 metropolitan
networks and are in trial in another 45 networks
around the world. Nortel has been supplying
Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology in service
provider networks for more than a year, with more
than 1000 shipments to-date. RPR technology is
still in the standards process of the IEEE 802.17
working group.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/01/passport/8600/index.html
Nortel Networks, May 9, 2001
EQUANT DELIVERS MULTIPLE IP VPNS OVER SINGLE MPLS
CONNECTION
Equant has begun allowing its multinational
enterprise customers to build multiple IP VPNs over
a single MPLS connection. The service allows
enterprises to build VPNs for different business
functions or departments with intranet links at
select sites, to build application specific VPNs,
and to control network costs by geography.
http://www.equant.com
Equant, May 9, 2001
- Equant is using
Cisco Systems’ MPLS implementation.
SPIRENT INTRODUCES VPN TEST SOLUTION
Spirent Communications introduced a
SmartBits TeraMetrics test solution to address the
operational issues related to developing,
optimizing, and deploying VPNs. The new TeraVPN
application allows users to determine the number of
IPSec tunnels that can be supported and the effect
on packet latency, loss and response time.
Troubleshooting capabilities include the creation of
a diagram of the steps during tunnel setup to
highlight specific failure modes. TeraVPN scales to
support hundreds of ports creating thousands of
tunnels, simulating data from thousands of clients
to servers across each tunnel. Availability is
expected in July.
http://www.spirentcom.com/news/pressreleases/scfirstvpntest.asp
Spirent,
May 9, 2001
CISCO ANNOUNCES ETHERNET OVER MPLS FOR METRO
AGGREGATION SERVICES
Cisco Systems announced an Ethernet over
MPLS (EoMPLS) metro-based network solution developed
on its Cisco 7600 Optical Services Router (OSR)
platform. The pre-standard implementation complies
with an IETF draft RFC. Key capabilities include
support for spanning tree on EoMPLS Virtual LANs (VLANs)
to all multiple transport paths for a VLAN; the
ability to configure traffic shaping on a per VLAN
basis; the setting of MPLS Class of Service (CoS)
per VLAN to allow for different service classes per
VLAN; and support for Link-Services Protocol (LSP)
setup using the MPLS Label Distribution Protocol
(LDP). 360networks has installed Cisco's EoMPLS
functionality in its test network and intends to
deploy the solution as a means of delivering
transparent LAN services.
http://www.cisco.com
Cisco
Systems, May 9, 2001
COREEXPRESS RELEASES PERFORMANCE METRICS FOR ITS
INTERNET EXTRANET
CoreExpress, which is pursuing a new model for
transferring traffic between ISPs with guaranteed
performance based on financial incentives, said its
Extranet delivers a 34% improvement in latency over
the public Internet and a 63% improvement in
frames-per-second. Video frames per second is
directly impacted by the level of latency and is the
most important metric for video applications.
http://www.CoreExpress.net
CoreExpress, May 9, 2001
- CoreExpress has
raised $573 million in venture funding from
Benchmark Capital, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter,
Nortel Networks, Cisco Capital, Amerindo
Investment, Bowman Capital, Capital Research and
Management Company, Octane Capital, and Technology
Crossover Ventures.
NORTEL NETWORKS EXPANDS IP TELEPHONY PORTFOLIO WITH
IP PHONES AND SOFTPHONES
Nortel Networks introduced two new IP
telephony solutions based on the existing software
of its traditional Meridian 1 PBX and Norstar key
systems. The new products are a Succession
Communications Server 1000 for Enterprises, which
will use an open IP architecture, and the Business
Communications Manager Version 2.5, which will
support a Nortel i2004 Internet Telephone and a
Nortel i2050 Soft Telephone. These two solutions
are scheduled to become available July 2001. The
company said a chief advantage of the IP solution
would be number portability for individual employees
or entire companies planning to move to new
locations, because the packet-based numbers used are
not dependent on the switching apparatus location.
http://www.nortelnetworks.com
Nortel
Networks, May 9, 2001
INARI’S 3RD GENERATION POWERLINE DELIVERS
12 MBPS
Inari, a
start-up based in Draper, Utah, announced a working
demonstration of its forthcoming third generation
Powerline communications technology, which is
capable of delivering 12 Mbps over electric power
cables. The company will offer a MAC/PHY 12Mbps
Powerline Network Controller chipset designed for
use in external Powerline networking adapters,
broadband gateways, MP3 players, cable/DSL modems
and Internet appliances. Inari has tested its
earlier 2 Mbps Powerline chipset and found greater
than 99.99% reliability in over 10,000 unique outlet
combinations.
http://www.inari.com
Inari, May 9, 2001
ASTA NETWORKS PREVENTS DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ON
INTERNET2 BACKBONE
Asta Networks, a start-up based in Seattle,
is now protecting over 50 Gbps of aggregate traffic
on the Internet2 Abilene backbone from
Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Asta Networks
noted several new trends from Denial-of-Service
hackers, including "Pulsing Zombies," which send
pulses of attack traffic at the intended target. The
discontinuous nature of these attacks makes
detection and location of these zombies far more
difficult. In addition, Asta Networks has seen that
zombies are now being tuned before attacks. In a
recent attack attempt, the hackers conducted a dress
rehearsal for their assault. Another new hacking
technique is the "Degradation of Service" attack, in
which links and sites are not completely overwhelmed
but are unnecessarily burdened with significant
amounts of bad traffic. The attack victim not only
suffers slower performance but most likely pays for
bandwidth usage. Asta Networks plans to introduce
its commercial DoS detection and prevention solution
next month.
http://www.astanetworks.com/
Asta Networks, May 9, 2001
TERAWAVE ANNOUNCES PASSIVE GEAR FOR LINKING FIBER
AND DSL
Terawave, a start-up based in Hayward,
California, announced a hardened Optical Network
Unit (ONU), which gives telecom service providers
the ability to locate DSLAMs closer to the
subscribers' premises by using fiber optic
“extension cords.”
http://www.terawave.com/newsroom.shtml
Terawave, May 9, 2001
MULTIPLEX RAISES $100+ MILLION FOR ACTIVE OPTICAL
COMPONENTS
Multiplex, a start-up based in South Plainfield,
New Jersey, raised over $100 million in third round
venture funding. The company develops high-end,
active photonic components and subsystems for the
metro networking segment. Product offerings include
10Gbps 1550nm and 1310nm EMLs; high-sensitivity
10Gbps photoreceivers; high-power 980nm pump lasers;
ultra-high-power 980nm pump laser combiners; 10Gbps
tunable EML transmitters; and 10Gbps transponders.
Investors include Zero Gravity Venture Partners,
Walden International Venture Partners, Credit Suisse
Ventures, Wheatley Partners, JP Morgan Chase HQ
Ventures, Robertson Stephens Ventures, and Capital
Research Company.
http://www.multiplexinc.com/
Zero
Gravity Venture Partners, May 9, 2001
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