Riverstone Networks today takes the wraps off a new 10-gigabit Ethernet edge router the vendor says addresses carrier needs for scalability and resiliency at a time when Ethernet services are becoming more mainstream.
“It’s the first device designed from the ground up to align with requirements that [service providers] are putting it in front of us right now,” says Dave Ginsburg, vice president of marketing and product management at Riverstone.
He adds that unlike many products on the market the Riverstone 15008, which is the first of what will be the 15000 Series, is not a redesigned ATM device or campus-derived Ethernet product. “By optimizing on Ethernet, we can offer a significantly lower price per port – between campus switching and traditional routers,” says Ginsburg, who declined to provide specific pricing for the 15008.
The 15008 includes an IP/MPLS control plane, multiple interface types, and the ability to converge traffic over MPLS. The product fits into a third of a rack, and each of its eight slots provide up to 24 gigabits of full duplex capacity.
Based on an ASIC-based forwarding architecture, the 15008 supports quality of service, tunneling and line-rate (10gbps) IPv4 and IPv6 forwarding.
Addressing reliability, Riverstone says the 15008 is the first Ethernet edge router to employ a distributed and modular operating system architecture. By running software protocols as modular processes, the 15008 is able to deliver unmatched routing software reliability, allowing the router to detect and restart errant protocols without affecting the rest of the system, according to the company. This dramatically reduces router software outages and reboots, according to the company, which says that currently nearly half of all network failures are caused by software related issues. The 15008 has redundant control modules and switch fabrics, and also supports resilient network designs with technologies like MPLS Fast Reroute and Service loop detection and prevention.
Now in “wide betas,” Riverstone expects to do its first revenue shipments of the 15008 in the second half of this year.
T-Systems is using the 15008 together with Germany’s national research and education network, Deutsches Forschungsnetz (DFN), in trials. DFN is operated by T-Systems and connects more than 600 research and education sites, most of which have their own local area networks.
