Lucent Technologies this week unveiled Acuity, its new end-to-end service-aware architecture for networks delivering high-bandwidth IP-based “blended” multimedia services. In addition it announced two new products – a Universal Packet Mux and a Resource Manager – to fill in gaps in its service-delivery portfolio supporting the framework.
As services begin to migrate from point solutions to continuous sessions incorporating multiple devices and access methods, Acuity calls for a network-oriented approach to QoS in contrast to today’ elemental approach, said Lucent’s Chief Marketing Officer John Giere in a press conference. By unifying control of IMS and non-IMS services, he added, carriers can control the end users’ quality of experience, or QoE.
The Acuity Network Architecture incorporates an integrated Ethernet/optical metro core, service-intelligent access, and policy-based, service-aware QoS, said John Leonard, marketing and offer management vice president for Lucent Network Solutions Group. The keys, he added, are centralized policy management and integration of Ethernet in the transport layer.
When carriers want to move beyond point solutions like video to multimedia sessions, today’s networks, which don’t have unified resource management and intelligence at the edge have no way to handle it, said Leonard. “There is no way to blend services or traverse domains and deliver quality of experience,” he said.
The company has been building a portfolio of products in support of the Acuity architecture. These include the line of carrier Ethernet routers from its recent acquisition of assets from Riverstone Networks as well as a Base Station Router introduced in March, which combines base station, radio network controller and core network router functionalities into one system.
New products announced at GLOBALCOMM include the Lucent Resource Manager and Universal Packet Mux.
The Lucent Resource Manager provides policy-based network resource management. Using policy management, an operator can specify rules to be applied to various types of communications in order to allocate network resources. These rules or policies determine how the network handles each communication session. It also will help enable operators to tailor network bandwidth dynamically to address changing customer demand.
The Lucent Resource Manager will work in combination with a distributed bearer gateway function that Lucent intends to offer as well. The two products will work in tandem to support the dynamic allocation of bandwidth, with the resource manager making the policy decisions (or laws) and the bearer gateway function, much like a traffic cop, implements and enforces those decisions by inspecting, monitoring and treating network traffic based on the policy.
The Lucent UPM integrates WDM, packet and TDM capabilities all on a single platform. The system features 280 gigabits of wire speed packet switching capacity and uses software from Riverstone Networks. The UPM supports 40gbps interfaces and a multidegree ROADM.
Lucent Technologies www.lucent.com
