Cable & Wireless plc (www.cableandwireless.com) and UUNet (www.uu.net), a subsidiary of MCI WorldCom Inc. (www.wcom.com), now claim the fastest and most flexible Internet backbone links yet, thanks to deployments of new M160 routers from Juniper Networks Inc. (www.juniper.net).
UUNet further raised the competitive backbone ante by implementing Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) on those routers. MPLS provides a set of traffic management tools, enabling the carrier to label priority IP traffic and optimize its delivery across interregional "label switched paths," rather than spreading data packet delivery across the five to a dozen router hops typical of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) transmission.
The Internet backbone corridor between New York and Washington, D.C., is first to benefit, with M160 10-gigabit-per-second (OC-192c, the "c" stands for concatenated) circuits installed in those cities by both UUNet and Cable & Wireless. UUNet also is running OC-192c between those cities and Chicago, with plans to link Atlanta, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area in the coming months.
Catching up data switching speeds with state-of-the-art optical speeds, the M160 succeeds (2.5-gbps) OC-48 routers, four of which would be needed to match M160 capacity.
"This is the next generation of combined fiber-optic and IP technology," said Kevin Boyne, senior vice president of global network services for UUNet. "We've moved up four X in capability, so we can be much more efficient and launch services for customers faster."
The combination of M160 packet-forwarding hardware and MPLS technology results in flexibility, as well as speed, Boyne said. Whereas standard OC-192 technology forces traffic to be squeezed into fixed 45-, 155- and 622-mbps or 2.5- and 10-gbps channels, the non-channelized OC-192c provides "one very large 10-gigabit stream," enabling the carrier to aggregate multi-gigabit traffic in any size, end to end. This is opposed to "slicing it up into pieces and reassembling it at the other end," Boyne said.
The new Internet Engineering Task Force MPLS standard, which labels data packets for priority delivery across IP circuit-like network paths, "is pretty well nailed down," Boyne said. "The next step is getting interoperability working among multiple vendors."
Once that's accomplished, he said, end users can be assured of switched path optimization and QoS assurance for mission-critical traffic across multiple carrier boundaries.
According to Christine Heckart, president of industry analyst Telechoice Inc. (www.telechoice.com), the availability of this router now could allow Juniper Networks to lock up a large chunk of the high-speed Internet core for the next 12 to 18 months.
