Hard times yield more resilient networks

Necessity is the mother of invention, and we're witnessing that old adage at work in public IP WAN infrastructures these days.

Carriers have very little wiggle room in their capital budgets, and they need to begin seeing returns on their IP infrastructures - soon. So their equipment investments of late have been of the meat-and-potatoes variety, focused on improving the basics of network availability and scalability to motivate businesses to move mission-critical traffic onto their IP services.

It's not a big mental leap to see how the economic realities driving carriers to reinforce the stability of their IP networks will ultimately benefit you, the IP services buyer. Once carriers deploy services that are at least as reliable as frame relay and PSTN voice networks, you'll start gaining the confidence that these services have the legitimacy to become a mainstream platform. This is what is required for the business masses to run the brunt of their mission-critical data applications - as well as voice and video, which are pickier about performance - on these networks.

What are the router vendors doing to foster highly resilient IP environments? Many showed off their latest high-availability capabilities at last week's SuperComm show in Atlanta. We reported recently that Cisco, for example, had made a series of high-availability improvements to its IOS software, collectively dubbed Globally Resilient IP. Cisco is not alone:

*Alcatel last month announced the availability of its Alcatel Carrier Environment Internet System for nonstop routing in its 7670 Routing Switch Platform.

*Last month, Avici Systems announced Non-Stop Routing technology for its SSR and TSR core routers.

*In February, Juniper Networks announced a feature called " routing protocol graceful restart " in its JUNOS 5.3 operating system to boost uptime in its M-series routers.

We'll take a closer look at some of these advancements next time.

Avici Non-Stop Routing white paper

Cisco Globally Resilient IP

Juniper Networks solutions brief
 

Steven Taylor, consultant and broadband packet evangelist, and Joanie Wexler, an independent networking technology editor and writer, team up to bring you this analysis and commentary. Taylor specializes in education and market analysis, and Wexler adds incisive reporting and research. For more detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter, connect to www.webtorials.com, the first Web site dedicated exclusively to market studies and technology tutorials in the Broadband Packet areas of Frame Relay, ATM, and IP.

Feedback and additional topic ideas are welcome. Please contact taylor@webtorials.com or joanie@jwexler.com.

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