Qwest Readies 100 Gbps Upgrade with Alcatel-Lucent

Qwest Communications announced plans to upgrade its nationwide network to deliver speeds of up to 100 Gbps to its customer edge sites. This build-out has begun on Qwest's network and is planned through 2010.


Qwest's evolving backbone capabilities will deliver 100 Gbps across its national network directly to customers in markets where the company offers its Ethernet-based iQ Networking and QWave data networking services. Qwest's upgraded backbone will transport and switch data faster and more cost-effectively, thus ensuring Qwest customers have the ability to scale bandwidth more conveniently and with greater ease.


Qwest has selected Alcatel-Lucent's architecture to enable the upgrade. Specifically, Qwest will deploy Alcatel-Lucent's recently announced 100 Gbps Ethernet service routing capability. Installation includes supporting routers and switches out to the edge of the network, as well as Alcatel-Lucent's optical, ultra long-haul platform that will transport the 100 Gbps services. Terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.


Qwest said its objective with this network upgrade is to deliver more powerful capabilities to its customer base, including global enterprises and governments. Additionally, this upgrade directly addresses and alleviates pressure on the network backbone. Internet traffic is doubling approximately every 19 months. And each year, individual Internet users consume approximately 43 percent more bandwidth than the previous year.


"This industry-leading upgrade, with the help of our partner Alcatel-Lucent, allows Qwest to meet the very real challenges of responding to data consumption trends. Qwest is satisfying customers' appetites for increasingly sophisticated applications while honoring the need to be more resource-efficient," stated Pieter Poll, chief technology officer, Qwest:

http://www.qwest.com
http://www.alcatel-lucent.comIn July 2009, Alcatel-Lucent introduced a 100 Gigabit Ethernet interface and a 10-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface, both with massive queuing, classification and traffic management capabilities, for its 7750 Service Router and 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS). Operators who have deployed Alcatel-Lucent service routers since 2004 can add the new line cards and immediately multiply capacity up to 100 Gbps per slot , double the current 50 Gbps maximum.


The new 100 Gigabit Ethernet capabilities are enabled by Alcatel-Lucent's custom FP2 chipset (launched July 2008), which is capable of sophisticated and optimized network processing and traffic management at speeds up to 100 Gbps. The FP2 chipset integrates 112 array cores for 95,000 MIPs performance and is implemented in 90nm process technology. The silicon was developed in house.