LONDON -- Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)'s wireline chief says the company is focused on gaining more share of the routing market, and that it aims to do that through investments in technologies such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and policy management.

In a briefing here in the City, Michel Rahier, president of the vendor's wireline business group, says such technology will draw carriers to the AlcaLu platform. Redundancy features were beefed up in the product line earlier this year. (See AlcaLu Tunes Up Redundancy.)

Rahier says the mission is to continue to eat market share from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR). He claims his division currently holds the No. 2 position in the IP edge service routing market with 22 percent, citing first-quarter 2007 statistics from Synergy Research Group Inc. That's still way behind Cisco's 56 percent but ahead of Juniper's 10 percent and the 6 percent that Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC)'s Redback Networks Inc. business commands. (See Agilent, Sequans Team.)

"In the past 18 to 24 months we have built up to 22 percent, taking 10 percent from Cisco and 12 percent from Juniper, and we're growing our market share at 1.5 percent per quarter," says Rahier.

Specifically, the company plans to add DPI capabilities into the 7750 service router platform, and integrate "service- and application-aware policy enforcement" capabilities into the 7750, the 7450 Ethernet aggregation switch, and the ISAM multiservice broadband access platform. (See Deep Packet Inspection .)

Rahier says that adding such capabilities to these network edge platforms is meeting the needs of carriers that want integrated, decentralized subscriber and service management capabilities.

The policy management capabilities, which help carriers manage their network resources to gain control over the delivery of services such as IPTV, have been developed using the experience gained from the collaboration with Bridgewater Systems Corp. (Toronto: BWC) (See Alcatel Launches Service Manager, Who Makes What: IP-Based Services Control, and Broadband Policy Servers.)

Alcatel-Lucent's IP business, founded on the acquisition of Timetra back in 2003 and led by Basil Alwan, is pushing hard on R&D to ramp up that share even further, says Rahier. (See AlcaLu Exec Wins Popularity Contest and Alcatel & TiMetra Seal the Deal.)

"It's not just about digesting Timetra. We are going to continue to invest in the next generation from a technology and product point of view. We have been first to address IP routing with QOS, but Cisco and Juniper have woken up and have announced it, too. We have a lot of developments to continue to leapfrog the competition in the coming years," claims Rahier. (See Juniper Pushes Services Policy and Cisco Catches Integration Fever.)

One area that's not receiving any investment, though, is the Ethernet switch technology Lucent took on board when it acquired Riverstone in March last year. Rahier says the 7750 and 7450 are "the products of choice." He notes that Riverstone had five significant deployments, and that Alcatel-Lucent is working with those customers to provide them with the support they need and a technology migration path. (See Telefónica Uses Lucent/Riverstone Combo and Riverstone Wins in Korea -- Again.)

The Alcatel-Lucent man also had time to take a swipe at PBT (Provider Backbone Transport), the carrier Ethernet technology that is beginning to divide the industry and get under the skin of the IP router vendors that don't want a new approach to Ethernet transport raining on their MPLS parade. (See PBT Parties On, Verizon Preps God Box RFP, AlcaLu: PBT Is Peripheral, Huawei Joins PBT Fan Club, and Cisco Tracks PBT Standards Process.)

"Ethernet over MPLS is the way to go for carriers. Compared with some other technologies that are being pushed by some of our competitors, such as PBT, we believe this is an offering that is much more standardized and comes at about the same cost point as PBT. We are showing our customers that Ethernet over MPLS is the right way." (See Nortel Pushes PBT Pact and NSN Touts PBT.)

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading