Alcatel-Lucent launches converged IP backbone network solution

Alcatel-Lucent has introduced an innovative converged IP/optical backbone network solution designed to relieve the strain on service providers' core networks caused by the explosive growth of video and other bandwidth-intensive applications.

The converged backbone transformation solution is a key component of Alcatel-Lucent's high leverage network strategy, key elements of which have already been selected by leading service providers, the company said in a release. 

Internet video traffic is increasing dramatically. At the same time, demand is also increasing for dynamic, IP-based services such as business data applications, tele-medicine, video surveillance, collaborative business applications (including telepresence), cloud computing, remote storage and backup and data centre protection and more, all of which have very high quality of service (QoS) requirements, the release noted.

Backbone networks - also referred to as "core" networks - must be able to handle both types of traffic appropriately, which is increasing the strain on core routers - through which nearly all traffic passes. Continually adding core router capacity is expensive, and as a result the network backbone is becoming a significant cost center, providing poor return on investment.

"We've been exploring new approaches to address traffic growth and customer demand and recently announced that Qwest is working with Alcatel-Lucent to evolve our nationwide backbone network to reach industry-leading 100 Gigabits per second speeds by implementing Alcatel-Lucent's LambdaXtreme and 7750 Service Routers," said Pieter Poll, chief technology officer, Qwest.

Alcatel-Lucent's new converged backbone transformation solution more tightly integrates IP and optical transport resources, enabling service providers to optimise and leverage their transport networks to deal with the rapid growth in traffic, while substantially cutting operational and maintenance costs.