Lucent/Juniper alliance bears fruit

By Jim Duffy, Network World, 11/03/03

Lucent and Juniper last week unveiled the first fruits of their six-month union: product combinations designed to let service providers better integrate legacy services and infrastructures with newer IP offerings.

The companies rolled out systems that couple Lucent's frame and ATM switches with Juniper's edge and core routers. The systems are designed to enable the provisioning of IP VPN services and transport of Layer 2 service over an IP/Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) core, and they are glued together with new software developed by Lucent and Juniper.

"What's unique is that Lucent customers can now offer IP-enabled frame relay service," says Mark Bieberich, an analyst with The Yankee Group. "This is the linchpin of their enterprise services strategy."

For IP VPNs, the companies developed what they call Enhanced IP VPN software, which lets service providers provision RFC 2547bis-compliant IP-enabled frame/ATM VPN services across the Lucent and Juniper platforms from Lucent's Navis iOperations management system. With this software, carriers can provision Layer 3 IP VPN services over frame relay/ATM infrastructures accessible via frame relay, ATM, Ethernet and DSL connections from customer sites. The software also lets Navis iOperations users provision 2547bis-compliant Border Gateway Protocol/MPLS VPNs across IP/MPLS networks.

Lucent and Juniper also developed software called Multiservice MPLS Core for their routers and switches that let service providers tunnel ATM and frame relay traffic across an IP/MPLS core. The software maintains the class- and quality-of-service (QoS) characteristics and traffic management of ATM even though the core is IP/MPLS.

For end-to-end transmission of ATM traffic, the software has a feature called ATM over MPLS Trunks. This feature ensures guaranteed bandwidth for certain classes of ATM traffic - constant bit rate, variable bit rate, available and unspecified bit rate - by mapping three service bits in an ATM cell to an MPLS label.

The MPLS label switched path (LSP) - or trunk - then is equipped to carry up to 31 QoS-specific data virtual paths. This helps facilitate the migration from ATM to an MPLS core without sacrificing ATM traffic management capabilities, the companies say.

The Multiservice MPLS Core software maps bits and messages from Lucent's proprietary VNN virtual circuit signaling scheme to MPLS LSPs, a technique borrowed from Lucent's canceled TMX 880 multiservice core MPLS switch. ATM PNNI signaling also is supported.

This software represents the first stage of a network-to-network interface development under Juniper's Infranet Initiative, an effort to coalesce the industry around a common set of techniques for making the Internet secure and reliable.

Like the VPN software, Multiservice MPLS Core can be provisioned from Lucent's Navis iOperations management system.

The VPN and core software extend across Lucent's CBX 500 and GX 550 ATM/frame switches, and Juniper's E-, M- and T-series routers. The VPN software is available now, and the core software is expected in the first quarter of 2004.

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