Nortel unveiled its Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) technology, focused on making Ethernet more capable for service provider deployments where deterministic service delivery with guaranteed quality of service and carrier-grade reliability is required.
Nortel describes PBT as a reliable, simple, scalable and cost-effective technology enabling Ethernet-based metro networks to work seamlessly with service providers' existing MPLS core networks.
The technology promises massive scalability (up to millions of service instances per metro) to Ethernet, while supporting Ethernet operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) standards to dramatically enhance the manageability of Ethernet.
Nortel has been an active player in the standardization of Provider Backbone Bridging (IEEE 802.1ah or Mac-in-Mac).
PBT is now available on Nortel's Metro Ethernet Routing Switch (MERS) 8600, with development underway to integrate PBT into the Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 and other Ethernet-ready platforms.
An early implementation of PBB has been available on Nortel's Metro Ethernet portfolio for several years, and a fully standardized version will be delivered later this year as the standard is ratified.
Key features of PBT include:
- Ethernet tunneling w/full MPLS interoperability
- Service and transport layer independence -- the services inside the tunnel could be Ethernet, IP, MPLS pseudo-wires or VPLS
- Traffic engineering & resiliency
- Secure, deterministic delivery
- Service scalability
- Operational simplicity
Nortel also announced the availability of integrated, standards-compliant resilient packet ring (RPR) technology into its flagship OME 6500 optical platform. RPR capabilities on the OME 6500 support multiple Ethernet rings of up to 10Gbps and the ability to provision up to eight classes of service on a per customer and per application basis. This helps ensure real-time traffic like video is prioritized, and enables service providers to offer differentiated service level agreements to their business services customers.
In addition, Nortel has developed several new Ethernet enhancements that improve the scalability and performance of its Metro Ethernet portfolio. This includes a new 10 GE Ultra card on the Nortel Optical Metro 5200 that enables the transport of 10 Gigabit Ethernet up to 175km without the need for regeneration or dispersion compensation, a 59% improvement over previous capabilities.
http://www.nortel.com
