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Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext and NYSE: ALU) has taken the wraps off its entry in the large-scale core router market. The 7950 XRS (Extensible Routing System) family, based on the company’s highly touted FP3 400-Gbps chipset, offers 32-Tbps capacity and 160 ports of 100-Gigabit Ethernet in the top of the line incarnation, the 7950 XRS-40.

The 7950 XRS family has three members:

    The 7950 XRS-40, which in addition to the capacity figures mentioned above is designed to accommodate up to 2 terabits per slot. It can be upgraded to multi-chassis configurations to ensure continued growth as needed. It will be available in the first half of 2013.
    The 7950 XRS-20 is a 16-Tbps core router with support for eighty 100 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces in a single rack, which Alcatel-Lucent asserts is 5X more than the current norm. It can be upgraded to a 7950 XRS-40 and/or multi-chassis configuration, and also will accommodate up to 2 terabits per slot. It will be available in the third quarter of 2012 and is currently in several trials.
    The 7950 XRS-16c is a 6.4-Tbps core router, aimed at smaller points of presence (POPs)/nodes requiring maximum agility. It sports up to thirty-two 100 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and is designed to accommodate 1 terabit per slot. It will be available in the first half of 2013.

In addition to high capacity, the 7950 XRS line is designed to offer cost-effective operation. The platforms offer power savings of more than 66 percent versus typical core routers, the company asserts. The company is positioning the family at both IP backbone networks as well as regional and metro core networks.

The 7950 XRS line also plays into Alcatel-Lucent’s IP/optical convergence strategy via the following features:

    support for transponder integration into the 7950 XRS at 10G, 40G, and 100G speeds
    efficient grooming of traffic from the IP layer into the optical transport network
    common management with the 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) platform
    an Optical Extension Shelf capability that integrates the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) with the 7950 XRS.

Alcatel-Lucent emphasizes that the new routers are built to scale. The 7950 XRS backplane and optical interconnect are designed to handle slot capacities of 2 Tbps, multi-chassis clustering that enables the system to scale up to 240 Tbps in the future, as well as support 400 Gigabit Ethernet and 1-Tbps interfaces as they become available.

The 7950 XRS routers will leverage Alcatel-Lucent’s existing Service Router Operating System (SR OS).

The company rounded up several endorsements for the 750 XRS launch.

“Verizon is experiencing tremendous growth in metro Ethernet services. Platforms such as the Alcatel-Lucent 7950 XRS will help us efficiently scale to support higher speeds and new capabilities while offering efficiency and flexibility,” said Ihab Tarazi, vice president of global IP and transport planning and technology, Verizon. “We applaud Alcatel-Lucent for its bold approach to router value and performance.”

“The success of our broadband services worldwide is resulting in rapid traffic growth in our IP network. As we carry more traffic, we have to improve the power and space efficiency of our network infrastructure” said Fumio Ito, vice president, network services technology of NTT Communications. “We are pleased to see innovation from Alcatel-Lucent that brings enhancements to the IP network in terms that might be able to address our operational challenges and costs.”

“BT is constantly improving our network to deliver new and better broadband services to our consumer and business customers” added Karl Penaluna, president, BT Global Networks and Systems. “We’ve been using Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 Service Router for many years as part of the rollout of the 21CN program across the UK. As we deal with increasing traffic volumes and deliver the growth in cloud services from our data centers, we’ll need platforms for our national and metro core networks that scale to 100-Gigabit links and beyond. We’re also constantly seeking to reduce our physical footprint and power per bit, so we’re very encouraged to see Alcatel-Lucent meeting these challenges with the 7950 XRS.”

“Service providers face a serious problem as they tackle 100G, the next great inflection point in their routing, switching and optical networks. If they keep adding more of the same equipment to their networks, they will end up multiplying space and power requirements” said Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder, Infonetics Research. “Alcatel-Lucent’s new 7950 XRS core router platform appears to address the scaling of core networks without growing both soft and hard operating costs. We expect that service providers will also see direct benefits of the versatility of the 7950 XRS in core/metro/datacenter interconnect networks and include it in their decision process mix as they evaluate how to scale their 100G infrastructure.”

UK service provider SSE Telecoms is adding 100-Gbps capability to its network backbone via its Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical Platforms, according to Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN). The 100-Gbps links connect SSE Telecoms’ sites in Manchester and Hampshire to the Global Switch 2 data center located in London’s Docklands.

SSE Telecoms, a strategic business unit of SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy), specializes in high-capacity Ethernet, optical wavelength, and custom dark fiber offerings. It had already installed the 6500 Packet-Optical Platforms in its national backbone to support 10-Gbps and 40-Gbps traffic. The 100-Gbps channels, powered via Ciena’s WaveLogic processor, will run alongside this existing traffic, according to the systems company.

The upgraded network enables SSE Telecoms to offer both 10-Gbps and 100-Gbps services while ensuring low latency, guaranteeing high availability, and reducing power consumption by 46 percent and footprint by 70 percent versus traditional 10-Gbps architectures, Ciena asserts.

“SSE Telecoms’ customers expect the most reliable, innovative, and flexible connectivity solutions, and so we are always striving to develop a network that reflects these expectations,” states Mark Corney, director of sales and development at SSE Telecoms. “We have identified Ciena’s platform as industry-leading in terms of quality and service delivery, a quality that is vital for SSE Telecoms market requirements. This network enhancement will develop our existing product capability and allow customers to develop specific network requirements that are to the best quality available. Our strategy to specialise and drive high capacity network requirements means that with the Ciena platform we are able to provide customers with an exciting proposition.”

Ciena says it has now shipped more than 14,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces to more than 120 customers across the globe, accounting for nearly 13 million coherent kilometers deployed worldwide.

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today unveiled its new WDM prototype, improving upon the current mainstream commercial products that use a 50GHz fixed spectrum interval. Boasting the highest spectrum efficiency among WDM products currently available, Huawei’s WDM prototype features a flexible spectrum interval with a minimum granularity of 12.5GHz, which not only increases the spectrum utilization and flexibility of the WDM system, but also lays a solid foundation for multi-carrier technologies and next-generation bandwidth-flexible optical networks beyond 100G. This highly efficient spectrum technology will enable carriers to build WDM networks that meet future needs.

The popularity of broadband services has triggered a rapid increase in transmission capacity and a drive towards 100G networks. Technologies beyond 100G WDM have now become the next research hotspots, with multi-carrier technology acknowledged as the solution for 400G and 1T transmissions. All current mainstream WDM systems are based on a 50GHz or 25GHz spectrum interval, as spectrum utilization is insufficient for 400G and 1T multi-carrier transmissions. The highly efficient WDM prototype developed by Huawei increases the spectrum utilization for large-capacity WDM systems. This compact spectrum solution will make the high-speed signals of the multi-carrier slimmer, ensuring the fiber is able to transfer signals more effectively.

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

Infonetics Research reports in its newly released Optical Network Hardware vendor market share tally that the first quarter of this year saw a drop in optical network systems revenues of 23% worldwide to $2.8 billion. The market shrinkage was particularly acute in Europe, which suffered its worst optical communications capex quarter in five years, the market research firm asserts.

The overall picture perhaps looks worse than it might because of the previous quarter’s strength. Optical network hardware spending grew 9% in the fourth quarter of 2011 (see "Infonetics: Optical network equipment up 9% in 4Q11"). Still, the situation in Europe may be dark enough to obscure any shine this caveat might otherwise have produced.

"While optical hardware revenue trends in all world regions were not positive in the first quarter of 2012, the most alarming development is that year-over-year in EMEA - particularly Europe - spending on WDM optical equipment decreased faster than spending on legacy SDH equipment," notes Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for optical at Infonetics Research. "This is not the behavior of a region experiencing only a minor quarterly pullback. By contrast, the trend in North America was the opposite, with carriers cutting spending year-over-year but allocating towards forward-looking technology investments like WDM equipment and ROADMs."

Unlike other areas of the world, Europe doesn’t show much near-term upside, either.

"EMEA and North America are both now trending downward on a rolling fourth-quarter basis, and Asia Pacific is flat. Still, conversations with vendors and carriers lead us to believe that spending in North America will resume moderate growth and we are forecasting solid gains in optical spending in China this year in large part due to our recent visits with Chinese carriers,” explains Schmitt. “But Europe is a tough call, with macroeconomic trends there not providing much hope and evidence that some service providers there are battening down the hatches."

As is always the case, some companies weathered the storm better than others. For example, Fujitsu and Ciena outperformed competitors in North America, while in Asia NEC and Fujitsu enjoyed 28% gains in 1Q12 from the year-ago quarter. Aside from NEC and Fujitsu, the relative winners in outperforming the market were smaller companies such as Infinera, ADVA, and Transmode, the report states.

ROADM optical equipment spending was flat in 1Q12, which Infonetics considers “an achievement” considering this niche posted a record quarter in 4Q11.

Infonetics' quarterly Optical Network Hardware report provides worldwide and regional vendor market share, market size, and analysis. Equipment tracked includes metro and long-haul SONET/SDH and WDM optical network equipment (transport, ROADM, submarine line terminating equipment), and ports (Ethernet, SONET/SDH/POS, and WDM).