Avici Rolls Out Terabit Router, Customer Comes Forward

LAS VEGAS, NV—At the Networld+Interop show at Las Vegas Convention Center (May 11-14), Avici Systems Inc. (Billerica, MA) is conducting the first public demonstration of its Terabit Switch/Router (TSR). The demonstration connects an Avici TSR to a Nortel Networks OC-192 transport node, which sends IP traffic to a TSR in the Nortel booth.

Claiming the first deployment of a terabit-capable Internet backbone platform into a live network, GST Telecommunications Inc. (Vancouver, WA) is deploying the TSR into the West Coast leg of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) project. NGI is a networking testbed co-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Transparent Optical Network (NTON) Consortium.

With the ability to interconnect 14 chassis, the TSR supports more than 8,000 OC-3c or 560 OC-192c connections with 40 modules per unit, mixing and matching data rates of OC-3c, OC-12c, OC-48c and OC192c. All the interfaces operate at line rate and link protocols include packet over SONET, ATM, and MPLS. Packet-over-SONET rates up to OC-48 are available now, and OC-192 will be available next year.

Avici reports that it is winning over ATM die-hards to its core router strategy. "The customers we are talking to are saying, 'I believe this can replace ATM at the core of our network,'" says Pete Chadwick, Avici's director of marketing. To accommodate a migration path for ATM-based core networks, the TSR's capability to perform ATM circuit emulation using MPLS will be available in the fall.

The idea is to provide a platform for a pure Internet protocol backbone, and let customers migrate to that end as they see fit. Carriers can start by deploying a TSR and filling it up with packet-over-SONET modules that subsequently feed a DWDM backbone, reserving a few wavelengths for legacy services. When the IP traffic dominates the backbone, the legacy traffic can be brought into the TSR fold. "By the end of the year, the basic tools will be there," Chadwick says.