Axiowave's Router Promises ATM-Grade QoS for IP

Axiowave
Networks, a start-up based Marlborough, Massachusetts, unveiled
its core/metro routing platform designed to deliver
"ATM-grade" quality of service for IP traffic.
Axiowave, which was founded in 2000 by Ray Stata and Mukesh
Chatter (formerly Lucent/Nexabit) is betting that the prevailing
IP/MPLS business model is flawed because service providers are
forced to overbuild and overprovision their networks. Axiowave
contends that most IP backbones today are not profitable because
CAPEX and OPEX are still too high, revenue per dollar invested
is low, margins are tight, and there is a lack of service
differentiation. But the greatest obstacle to IP profitability,
according to the company, is that the average sustained
utilization per IP egress port is below 30%. Even with MPLS
backbones, service providers must keep each port's sustained
utilization rate quite low in order to maintain promised SLAs.
This makes it difficult to "fill up the pipes," so,
instead, service providers "build more pipes." Company
CEO Mukesh Chatter believes ATM's best attribute was its ability
to carve out bandwidth for each service and to enforce the
bandwidth allocations in hardware. As a result, ATM and Frame
Relay networks remain more profitable than their IP
counterparts.



Axiowave's core/metro routing platform leverages a unique
switching and queuing architecture designed for carving out
bandwidth among four classes of service (ATM-CBR, VBR-rt, VBR-nRT,
and best effort). The platform uses ASICs and FPGAs. The company
claims it can increase the utilization of IP egress trunks to
90%, including a high percentage (90+%) in the presence of
oversubscribed best-effort traffic. As with ATM, unused
bandwidth from any service running on the platform can be
dynamically distributed to other services with burstable
options. Examples of premium IP services could include,
too-grade VoIP, ATM-grade IP VPNs, wireless voice, broadcast
video, etc.

Source: Axiowave



Axiowave's first model, the XCR128, will support up to 32
OC192c, or a combination of OC-48c, GbE, OC12 and OC3
interfaces. Standard support for IP/MPLS protocols includes
BGPv4, OSPF, IS-IS and MPLS. Key features also include:

• completely non-blocking packet switching architecture that
  scales to 1.28 Tbps
  
• a modular, shelf-based architecture that expands by adding
  I/O shelves
  
• line cards that support any protocol -- such as IP, MPLS,
  Ethernet and native ATM -- on any port as a
  software-configurable option
  
• a modular operating system that isolates failures,
  preventing one failure from affecting other processes.
  
• support for IETF Graceful Restart mechanisms
  
• multiple "deep" packet touch operations such as
  large "multi-field" packet classification,
  policing, filtering, scheduling, congestion management, and
  accounting operate at wire-speed for all packet sizes.

http://www.axiowave.com

• Axiowave has raised $121 million in funding to date. The company has approximately 156 people.



• Axiowave was founded in May 2000 by Ray Stata (formerly a founder of Nexabit Networks), Mukesh Chatter (formerly a founder and CEO of Nexabit Networks), Satish Soman (formerly VP of Chip Development and Modeling at Nexabit Networks), and Peter Marconi (formerly a founder of Nexabit Networks).


• In June 1999, Lucent Technologies first announced plans to acquire Nexabit Networks, a start-up developing a terabit-class IP switch/router, in a stock swap deal valued at about $900 million at the time (14 million shares of LU). The announcement came one day after Lucent completed its acquisition of Ascend Communications.



• In October 2002, Lucent Technologies confirmed that it had abandoned its TMX 880 high-capacity core network switch, which was based on technology acquired from Nexabit Networks.