Redback looks to redefine edge routing

Redback Networks, the edge router maker recently acquired by Ericsson, Monday unveiled its third-generation system which boasts a twofold increase in capacity for video networks, as well as other enhancements.

The SmartEdge 1200 doubles system throughput to 480Gbps over earlier generation SmartEdge routers. It also extends triple-play services to mobile networks and integrates several network applications into a single router.

“The primary [goal] was scale,” Redback CEO Kevin DeNuccio says. “We were trying to scale in two dimensions: We can deliver huge amounts of bandwidth for IPTV; the other dimension was to prepare for this broadband mobility where we have scaled the control plane eight times. You can put a half-million subscribers on this platform.”

That might help keep Redback’s momentum going in the edge-router market. The company gained a full percentage point of share between the fourth quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of this year, as well as almost two percentage points from 2005 to 2006, according to Dell’Oro Group.

However, Redback’s share dropped from 7.1% from the first quarter of 2006 to 6.4% in the first quarter of 2007, according to Dell’Oro.

“This is the largest B-RAS [broadband remote-access server] in the market now,” says Mark Seery, an analyst at market-researcher Ovum. “It’s s fairly impressive announcement. They’ve put that scalability concern to bed.”

The SmartEdge 1200 is also backward compatible with the first two generations of SmartEdge, the 400 and 800 series routers.

Redback believes that in 10 years, more than 2 billion wireless and wireline users will be upgraded to video-centric broadband networks from 250 million broadband users today. The SmartEdge 1200 manages at one time as many as 512,000 broadband users and hundreds of thousands Internet-based data, voice and video services, Redback says.