Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

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duwenhua 12/5/2012 | 5:32:24 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

Add some comments to   Soupafly:

Actually Huawei NE5K is the number 1 at density until today. It has released 200G line card one year ago, it is  ready to ship 200G LPU to customer today.

NE5K has 16 slots, 200G*16slot=3.2T. 

CRS-3 is 140G*16slot = 2.24Tbps

T4000 is 240G*8slot =1.92T

All the other vendors are working on new LPUs which are 400G+.  So, who will be the really number one to provide really product to customer?  Just wait.

http://www.huawei.com/en/solutions/broader-smarter/hw-092902.htm

--------------Soupafly wrote--------------------------------------------------------------

The NE5K may not have the feature density but it kills all of them for power, clustering capability and I believe space. Or at least it did....

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DCITDave 12/5/2012 | 5:32:22 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

I'd love to see Alcatel-Lucent weigh in here. There are three pretty good points raised here by uguess that could stand to be addressed.

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yarn 12/5/2012 | 5:32:22 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

Indeed, kudos to their team. Impressive!

My guess on the 5x capacity is based on the XRS offering 5x more 100G ports per rack then the CRS-3/T4000 do. System capacity is a bit misleading here as Cisco's 16 x 140G effectively becomes only 16 x 100G, ie 1.6 Tb/s. Not sure about the 66% higher efficiency either, but I can easily see how one rack of gear only needs one third of the power of the equivalent 5 (6 really for multi-chassis) racks of lower density CSCO/JNPR gear it'd take otherwise. You'd think it'd be even less.

In the datasheet I saw all the typical core routing and switching features you'd want but nothing about "complex edge capabilities". Did I miss anything?

 

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Pete Baldwin 12/5/2012 | 5:32:22 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

Hi Flook -- No insult taken; you and Soupafly had some really good points.

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Soupafly 12/5/2012 | 5:32:21 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

@ yarn; I strongly suspect fella that Basil & Lyndsey know full well that allot of their claims are going to be partly theoretical.

Which means; Power: In a optimised port utilisation and density deployment with certain features/services activated the cost per bit is 66% better than a sub-optimal competing platform based on a legacy system base.

Density: See above.

Why theoretical? Because, the chances of a customer using that exact config & service mix are low, at best.

Its interesting because Basil also states that this is a key enabler for a new super-core architecture which he believes will emerge that will blend the metro networks with the core. (Cloud computing & Data-centre HPC will imho, fuel this trend, so I can understand his thinking.)

Yet, looking at the datasheet makes no mention (as yarn said) of any service edge type feature depth.

I agree btw completely with the spirit of the board. The innovations in silicon that A-L team have delivered are exceptional & worthy of acclaim. Right now they are clearly leading the field in 3D FPGA capabilities. (3D = density, dexterity, delivery)

Soups

 

 

 

 

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Alex_Fduch 12/5/2012 | 5:32:20 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

Guys,

4x100GE card for 7950 XRS is shipped from Q3'2012.

4x100GE for 7750 SR will be available next year.

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Pete Baldwin 12/5/2012 | 5:32:20 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

uguess -- IIRC, the 4x100GE card ships next year.

EDIT: I am not correct; see the next message. Thanks Alex.

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lindsay_newell 12/5/2012 | 5:32:19 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

yarn is on the right track:

core networks are moving rapidly from 10G to 100G, so how many 100GE ports can be supported in a rack is going to be an important criteria.

7950 XRS-20 is 80 ports (20 slots, 400G FD per slot)

CRS-3 is 16 ports (16 ports, 140G FD per slot)

so the difference is 5X

Building a 16Tb/s node (160 x 100GE ports) is another comparison.

7950 XRS-40 is two 19" racks and 160 x 100GE ports (no multi-chassis required).

CRS-3 needs multi -chassis with at least two fabrics and ten CRS-3s (16x100GE each) - that's at least twelve 23" racks. It may be more - I don't think any carriers have ever deployed a multi-chassis system this big.

The difference is more than 5X and it should be obvious that the power saving is going to be at least 66%.

In response to the other comment "uguess" made about network processors, the 7950 XRS uses Alcatel-Lucent's 400G FP3 network processor that is also used in the 7750 SR. I'm not sure what you mean by a "programmable forwarding ASIC", but it's not a network processor. As far as keeping up with capacity growth for the terabit era, 7950 XRS core router has market-leading 100G density, it's the first and only core router that is ready for 400G clear-channel (the 400G linecards use a single 400G NPU, not n x 100G silicon with all the complexity of muxing, multiple memories and packet ordering) and we think that leadership is sustainable beyond 400G.

Lindsay Newell

VP Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent

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Alex_Fduch 12/5/2012 | 5:32:19 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

One more.

It was not very clearly said,  but 66% less power means 66% less per gigabit.

Hence full 7950 XRS-20 is expected to consume roughly 1.67 times more than full Juniper T4000.

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uguess 12/5/2012 | 5:32:18 PM

re: Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Get Core-Router Upgrades

@Lindsay

 

Great to have someone from ALU IPD to enlighten us here. :-)

Agreed on the comparison with CRS.  Good pick by the way.  But it is not compared to the industry's best.

If future 400GE or 1000GE is chosen, some current platforms probably could not deliver, than 5 becomes infinite. :-)

I have limited knowledge about network processors in general, so please elaborate a little bit on the differences of a programmable ASIC and a network processor? Is FP3 an ASIC?

Having 400GE clear channel is great, although it is probably not critical at the moment while the industry is starting to deploy 100GE.  There is no doubt that ALU's chipset development is leading edge.   What I am not sure about is whether the same chipset architecture can go beyond 400G to 1T without significant changes.  Also system capabilities depend on the total package, not just forwarding chip, e.g., SDRAM, TCAM, etc. , so it seems not practical to always claim edge-like capabilites as capacity grows exponentially.  Again, what are the new capabilities, and are they required? 

Another point is that core router is not only about hardware capabilities, flexible scalable, and reliable software is key too.

Time will tell whether XRS will be successful.  But as always, kudos to innovations.    

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