Alcatel Breaks QoS Performance Barrier With OmniCore 5000 Series; Multi-Layer Classification, Layer-7 Wirespeed, Multi-Vendor Mapping - Product Announcement

Cambridge Telcom Report, May 1, 2000

Alcatel Tuesday announced the addition of advanced quality of service (QoS) features for its OmniCore 5000 family of backbone switches, providing enterprises with an intelligent core switch that supports converged voice, video, and data networks used to expand e-business applications.

With these new QoS features, Alcatel can provide IT managers with switching that offers "intelligent performance" -- the ability to achieve effective mission-critical business applications and voice and video over IP. The QoS capabilities are so comprehensive and powerful that they can identify and accelerate revenue-bearing traffic through the e-business network at gigabit wire-speeds.

The OmniCore 5000 family adds value in real world, multi-vendor environments that need end-to-end quality of service. The latest release provides a mapping mechanism between domains where different QoS signaling is used, solving multi-vendor and migration issues. IT managers can use the OmniCore to both ease points of congestion and optimize limited resource interfaces like server farm interfaces and (WAN) uplinks.

The OmniCore 5000 applies user-controlled rules per port, blade, switch, switch-group, or network. These rules can distinguish services for expedited, assured, and best effort traffic. They can also eliminate unwanted traffic such as denial of service packets without compromising performance on multiple gigabit interfaces.

The OmniCore 5000 employs a Parallel Shared Memory to give exceptional dynamic buffering to individual interfaces from moment to moment. Up to 75% of the entire buffer space is available to ensure that important revenue-bearing traffic is not dropped. The redundant parallel access shared memory also facilitates multicast traffic which is placed in memory only once, then simply copied out by each destination interface, saving buffer space and delays caused by packet duplicating mechanisms. Since quality of service is done in the OmniCore hardware, there is no performance impact by enabling any of these functions.

"It is critical that our utilization of voice over IP traffic is not impeded by large data transfers and multimedia applications that run in the 52 schools connected through our gigabit MAN," said Dennis Schwiekhardt, manager of technology infrastructure, Spokane School District. "The quality of service features in Alcatel's OmniCore 5052 and 5010 provide us with a powerful tool for prioritizing voice as a mission-critical business, educational, and security application."

"Alcatel views QoS as an essential brick in a converged infrastructure to guarantee mission-critical applications such as ERP, voice or video," said Joelle Gauthier, Alcatel vice president of enterprise data marketing. "As enterprises deploy IP telephony to generate new revenue streams, QoS plays a pivotal role of ensuring the effective delivery of traffic. As a multi-vendor solution or coupled with Alcatel's OmniPCX 4400 IP-based PBX, the OmniCore 5000's advanced QoS enables enterprises to migrate from traditional applications to IP telephony in the LAN. It is IP without compromise."

Intelligent QoS, unique features The OmniCore 5000 provides true layer-2, layer-3, layer-4, and layer-7 packet classification with the ability to probe 256 bytes deep into each packet at wirespeed. With this capability, the switch family can distinguish and prioritize voice, video and mission-critical application traffic.

The OmniCore 5000's multi-layer classification engine allows the IT manager to grant the appropriate bandwidth to the correct user and application by using Boolean "and/or" functions. This unique feature can, for instance, be used to grant priority to voice traffic over nonmission-critical traffic and/or a revenue-generating user over a recreational user.

In addition to wirespeed QoS, the IT manager can restrict unwanted or unauthorized applications with a unique hardware-based access control list so network usage is dedicated to real enterprise needs. >From prioritization to filtering, these functions cover the spectrum of bandwidth control at wirespeed.

Another unique feature of Alcatel's OmniCore 5000 is embedded mapping between layer-2 and layer-3 quality of service signaling. This enables quality of service features to scale more effectively in existing, multi-vendor network environments where products and protocols traditionally differ.

"Now that it has entered the market with its OmniPCX 4400, Alcatel is demonstrating that it can provide the tools to support the converged applications that its IP telephony system enables," said Elizabeth Herrell, senior industry analyst, Giga Information Group.

OmniCore 5000 family OmniCore 5000 (formerly the Packet Engines PowerRail) products feature IP performance up to 52 Gbps, routing performance of 37 Mpps with extensive routing capabilities, flexible connectivity options, a powerful parallel access shared memory architecture, and policy-based management simplifying network administration. OmniCore 5000 provides a line of modular routing switches chassis with various density and connectivity options. Available OmniCore 5000 products include: Omnicore 5052, OmniCore 5022, OmniCore 5010.