Carrier Ethernet Equipment Design

Held January 30, 2008

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Session 1: Carrier-Ethernet Design Trends

Bob Wheeler will present an overview of market, technology, equipment-design, and silicon trends for designers of carrier-Ethernet equipment.

Session 2: High-Performance Packet Processing

This session, moderated by Bob Wheeler, focuses on packet processing in Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router and other high-bandwidth equipment designs.

Future Carrier-Ethernet Requirements and the Dataflow Architecture
      Anders Wirkestrand, Director of Marketing, Xelerated

In this presentation, Xelerated will describe the requirements for future Carrier-Ethernet capable NPUs and explain how its Dataflow architecture meets those requirements. These include 100G Ethernet capability, deterministic processing, and in-service upgrades. The talk will discuss the evolution of the Dataflow architecture and the need for complete reference designs and carrier-proven NPU applications to reduce time to market.

Network Flow Processing in Carrier Ethernet
     Derek “Mac” McAuley, CTO, Netronome Systems

The growing number and evolving nature of carrier-Ethernet protocols require both high-performance and programmable silicon solutions. Furthermore, while equipment is initially focused on basic packet forwarding, new services will emerge that demand a significant degree of programmability in service blades using a combination of both NPUs and general purpose processors. In this talk, Netronome will discuss how it addresses these needs with the NFP3200, a next-generation NPU derived from the Intel IXP.

Challenges in 100Gbps Processing
      Patrick Bisson, VP Technology Applications, EZchip Technologies

In this talk, EZchip will discuss the applications for 100Gbps Ethernet and the challenges in scaling network processors to support these requirements. A preview of EZchip's upcoming NP-4 100Gbps NPU will also be presented.

Building Flexibility into Carrier-Ethernet Equipment
      Lars A. Pedersen, CTO, TPACK

The carrier-Ethernet market is in a state of confusion with many competing technologies and protocols for efficient transport and switching of packet data. The choice of technology and protocol will be driven by the installed base and target application, which requires carrier-Ethernet equipment to accommodate these alternatives and keep up with the latest standards and technologies as they are introduced. In this talk, TPACK will discuss how its FPGA-based SOFTSILICON solutions enable this flexibility without adversely affecting time to market, cost, or power dissipation.

Session 3: Addressing Platform-Design Challenges

This session, moderated by Linley Gwennap, will examine requirements and design alternatives for the data plane and the control plane.

The Follies of Enterprise Silicon in Carrier-Class Networks
      Mike Lardner, VP of Engineering, Lightstorm Networks

Next-generation carrier networks are moving towards connection-oriented packet technologies for cost-effective management, network scalability, and performance. The IEEE, IETF, ITU, and MEF have also defined a number of standards that are unique to the carrier market including PBB-TE, VPLS, and OAM. These new requirements have created the need for a new class of wire-rate Ethernet switch. This presentation will explore real-world network applications using the latest standards and discuss the challenges of attempting to deploy enterprise products in this highly competitive market.

Building Resilient Carrier-Ethernet Equipment with Freescale’s Multi-Core Processors
     Kyle Aubrey, Global IP Services FAE Team Leader, Freescale

Carrier Ethernet offers the promise of flexibly provisioned bandwidth using cost-effective Ethernet technology. The delivery of these services requires high availability and resiliency in the equipment network management and control plane implementations. This presentation will examine the control plane requirements for Carrier Ethernet equipment and discuss how Freescale’s high performance Power Architecture multi-core solutions can address these design challenges.

Session 4: The Evolving Metro Network

This session, moderated by Bob Wheeler, examines the evolution of metro networks from legacy protocols to new carrier-Ethernet models.

Mobile Backhaul over Metro Ethernet
     Liviu Pinchas, Director of Systems Architecture, Wintegra

Current mobile-backhaul architectures face significant challenges created by increasing data throughputs demanded by new services that must be supported without increasing operating costs. This presentation will discuss the short-term transport of legacy data over Metro Ethernet using protocols such as PWE3 and clock synchronization over packet networks. Wintegra will also address the longer-term shift to all-IP network architecture and will disclose a new family of Wintegra devices that support this transition.

Enabling Cost-Effective Carrier Ethernet for the Metro WDM Transport Network
      Subhash Roy, CTO, AMCC

New and cost-effective solutions are needed to enable a mass migration from traditional WDM transmission equipment to the carrier-Ethernet model. The combination of EDC and FEC technologies offers a potential solution. In this talk, AMCC will discuss these challenges and provide the first public disclosure of their next-generation 10GbE mapper.

Session 5: Challenges in Carrier-Equipment Design

This panel, moderated by Bob Wheeler, will discuss the many challenges associated with next-generation carrier-equipment designs including Carrier Ethernet Switch/Routers, multiservice provisioning platforms, and new access aggregation platforms.

Moderator: Bob Wheeler, The Linley Group
Panelists:   Subhash Roy, AMCC; Patrick Bisson, EZchip; Mike Lardner, Lightstorm; Derek “Mac” McAuley, Netronome; Anders Wirkestrand, Xelerated.