Cisco has delivered a major upgrade to Colt's pan-European, U.S. and Asian packet network.
The Colt IQ Network is using Cisco's segment routing and Ethernet VPN (EVPN) technologies to deliver further differentiated, high-bandwidth connectivity solutions. The companies have also been working on a system-wide, multiple 100Gbps upgrade to Colt's IQ Network.
EVPN provides a unified control plane protocol (Border Gateway Protocol - BGP) for all services types, including both Layer 2 VPN and Layer 3 VPN services. It also provides faster convergence times. Cisco said its segment routing also:
- improves network availability with 50ms protection mechanism, covering 100% of the possible network topologies using TI-LFA SR;
- enables better utilization of the network with simple and scalable MPLS segment routing traffic engineering for the data plane;
- makes possible the delivery of innovative network services possible, offering on-demand real-time delivery capabilities.
The Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS) 5500 series and the Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 9000 platforms will form the main components of a unified fabric powered by IOS XR and its market-leading software innovations -- segment routing and EVPN.“Colt is focused on providing best-in-class, high-bandwidth connectivity solutions to meet our customers’ ever-growing business needs,” said Peter Coppens, vice president, Product, Colt. “Aligning with these overarching goals, we worked closely with Cisco to design a network architecture that is simple to operate, highly available and capable of delivering innovative network services. This also enables Colt to benefit from faster time-to-market. Segment routing significantly decreased complexity in the IQ Network and helped us start offering differentiated network services such as disjoint path. EVPN further contributed to operational simplification and made the delivery of services much more efficient.”
“We have been working on this initiative with Colt for more than a year, and we are proud to bring additional benefits to its network, as well as lay the groundwork for new opportunities,” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Networking, Cisco."
