Alcatel offers Ethernet safety net

PARIS - Alcatel says it has a way for service providers to introduce new Ethernet data services without cutting into revenue they generate from frame relay.

The vendor last week unveiled software for its 7670 Routing Switch Platform - a core multiservice Layer 2/Layer 3 switch - designed to enable Ethernet VPN access to frame relay and ATM core networks. The software, called Service Interworking, maps frame relay data link connection identifiers (DLCI) to Ethernet virtual LAN (VLAN) ID tags.

Service Interworking eliminates the need for all corporate sites to be connected via Ethernet in order to communicate with each other, Alcatel says. Service providers would like to offer Ethernet services to customers that have higher bandwidth requirements at many locations but do not want the risk or costs associated with migration of the entire network to an all-Ethernet-based offering, the vendor says. Ethernet services can be provisioned in 1M bit/sec increments, while frame relay circuits usually range from T-1 to fractional T-1 and 56k bit/sec.

But frame relay is a cash cow for carriers, generating $8.4 billion in U.S. service revenue last year, which is expected to grow to just under $11 billion by 2006, according to The Yankee Group. Also limiting widespread adoption of Ethernet services has been the belief among service providers that they would have to migrate their frame relay infrastructures to Ethernet - and disrupt that dependable revenue stream, Alcatel says.

"From a service provider perspective, there's a kind of a mentality that they'd have to rearchitect their networks if they want to deliver Ethernet services," says Christin Flynn, director of carrier convergence infrastructure research at The Yankee Group. "That can be quite daunting."

By mapping frame relay DLCIs to Ethernet VLAN tags, Service Interworking creates a "unified" Ethernet/frame relay VPN, Alcatel says. The software lets carriers offer customers switched VPN services with the choice of mixing frame or cell relay with Ethernet access to the VPN. Service Interworking will let corporations and carriers deploy the most appropriate access technology at each site, Alcatel says.

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A corporate headquarters could utilize high-speed Ethernet access at 200M bit/sec with the ability to grow in segments as small as 1M bit/sec, but branch-office frame relay access and customer premises equipment, which use lower-speed access rates, would remain unchanged. All locations would continue to share a VPN, Alcatel says.

Standards work is under way to define a common specification for frame relay-to-Ethernet interworking. But Alcatel decided to address its own customer interests first.

"We got sick of waiting" for the standard to crystallize, says Vinay Rathore, director of strategic marketing for Alcatel. Rathore says it might be a year or two before the IETF, Multi-protocol Label Switching and Frame Relay Alliance, and ATM Forum agree on a standard, but "it's anybody's guess" as to when it will be completed.