Alcatel-Lucent serves up x86-based IP edge routing

Alcatel-Lucent has re-architected its edge IP router functions - its service router operating system (SR OS) and applications - to run on Intel x86 instruction-set servers.

Shown is the VSR running on one server and distributed across several servers. Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

The company's Virtualized Service Router portfolio aims to reduce the time it takes operators to launch services and is the latest example of the industry trend of moving network functions from specialist equipment onto stackable servers, a development know as network function virtualisation (NFV).     

"It is taking IP routing and moving it into the cloud," says Manish Gulyani, vice president product marketing for Alcatel-Lucent's IP routing and transport business. 

IP edge routers are located at the edge of the network where services are introduced. By moving IP edge functions and applications on to servers, operators can trial services quickly and in a controlled way. Services can then be scaled according to demand. Operators can also reduce their operating costs by running applications on servers. "They don't have to spare every platform, and they don't need to learn its hardware operational environment," says Gulyani 

Alcatel-Lucent has been offering two IP applications running on servers since mid-year. The first is a router reflector control plane application used to deliver internet services and layer-2/ layer-3 virtual private networks (VPNs). Gulyani says the application product has already been sold to two customers and over 20 are trialling it. The second application is a routing simulator used by customers for test and development work. 

More applications are now being made available for trial: a provider edge function that delivers layer-2 and layer-3 VPNs, and an application assurance application that performs layer-4 to layer-7 deep-packet inspection. "It provides application level reporting and control," says Gulyani. Operators need to understand application signatures to make decisions based on which applications are going through the IP pipe, he says, and based on a customer's policy, the required treatment for an app.

Additional Virtualized Service Router (VSR) software products planned for 2015 include a broadband network gateway to deliver triple-play residential services, a carrier Wi-Fi solution and an IP security gateway.  

Alcatel-Lucent claims a two rack unit high (2RU) server hosting two 10-core Haswell Intel processors achieves 160 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) full-duplex throughput. The company has worked with Intel to determine how best to use the chipmaker's toolkit to maximise the processing performance on the cores. 

"Using 16, 10 Gigabit ports, we can drive the full capacity with a router application," says Gulyani. "But as more and more [router] features are turned on - quality of service and security, for example - the performance goes below 100 Gigabit. We believe the sweet-spot is in the sub-100 Gig range from a single-server perspective."

In comparison, Alcatel-Lucent's own high-end network processor chipset, the FP3, that is used within its router platforms, achieves 400 Gigabit wireline performance even when all the features are turned on.

"With the VSR portfolio and the rest of our hardware platforms, we can offer the right combination to customers to build a performing network with the right economics," says Gulyani.  

Alcatel-Lucent's server router portfolio split into virtual systems and IP platforms. Also shown (in grey) are two platforms that use merchant processors on which runs the company's SR OS router operating system i.e. the company has experience porting its OS onto hardware besides its own FPx devices before it tackled the x86. Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

Gazettabyte asked three market research analysts about the significance of the VSR announcement, the applications being offered, the benefits to operators, and what next for IP.

Glen Hunt, principal analyst, transport & routing infrastructure at Current Analysis

Alcatel-Lucent's full routing functionality available on an x86 platform enables operators to continue with their existing infrastructures - the 7750SR in Alcatel-Lucent's case - and expand that infrastructure to support additional services. This is on less expensive platforms which helps support new services that were previously not addressable due to capital expenditure and/ or physical restraints.

The edge of the service provider network is where all the services live. By supporting all services in the cloud, operators can retain a seamless operational model, which includes everything they currently run. The applications being discussed here are network-type functions - Evolved Packet Core (EPC), broadband network gateway (BNG), wireless LAN gateways (WLGWs), for example - not the applications found in the application layer. These functions are critical to delivering a service.

Virtualisation expands the operator’s ability to launch capabilities without deploying dedicated routing/ device platforms, not in itself a bad thing, but with the ability to spin up resources when and where needed. Using servers in a data centre, operators can leverage an on-demand model which can use distributed data centre resources to deliver the capacity and features.

Other vendors have launched, or are about to launch, virtual router functionality, and the top-level stories appear to be quite similar. But Alcatel-Lucent can claim one of the highest capacities per x86 blade, and can scale out to support Nx160Gbps in a seamless fashion; having the ability to scale the control plane to have multiple instances of the Virtualized Service Router (VSR) appear as one large router.

Furthermore, Alcatel-Lucent is shipping its VSR route reflector and the VSR simulator capabilities and is in trials with VSR provider edge and VSR application assurance – noting it has two contracts and 20-plus trials. This shows there is a market interest and possibly pent-up demand for the VSR capabilities.

It will be hard for an x86 platform to achieve the performance levels needed in the IP core to transit high volumes of packet data. Most of the core routers in the market today are pushing 16 Terabit-per-second of throughput across 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports and/ or via direct DWDM interfaces into an optical transport core. This level of capability needs specialised silicon to meet demands.

Performance will remain a key metric moving forward, even though an x86 is less expensive than most dedicated high performance platforms, it still has a cost basis. The efficiency which an application uses resources will be important. In the VSR case, the more work a single blade can do, the better. Also of importance is the ability for multiple applications to work efficiently, otherwise the cost savings are limited to the reduction in hardware costs. If the management of virtual machines is made more efficient, the result is even greater efficiency in terms of end-to-end performance of a service which relies on multiple virtualised network functions.

Ultimately, more and more services will move to the cloud, but it will take a long time before everything, if ever, is fully virtualised. Creating a network that can adapt to changing service needs is a lengthy exercise. But the trend is moving rapidly to the cloud, a combination of physical and virtual resources.

Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst, Infonetics Research

There is overwhelming evidence from the global surveys we’ve done with operators that they plan to move functions off the physical IP edge routers and use software versions instead.

These routers have two main functions: to handle and deliver services, and to move packets. I’ve been prodding router vendors for the last two years to tell us how they plan to package their routing software for the NFV market. Finally, we hear the beginnings, and we’ll see lots more software routing options.

The routing options can be called software routers or vRouters. The services functions will be virtualised network functions (VNFs), like firewalls, intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems, deep-packet inspection, and caching/ content delivery networks that will be delivered without routing code. This is important for operators to see what routing functions they can buy and run in NFV environments on servers, so they can plan how to architect their new software-defined networking and NFV world.

It is important for router vendors to play in this world and not let newcomers or competitors take the business. Of course, there is a big advantage to buy their vRouter software — route reflection for example — from the same router vendor they are already using, since it obviously works with the router code running on physical routers, and the same software management tools can be used.

Juniper has just made its first announcement. We believe all router vendors are doing the same; we’ve been expecting announcements from all the router vendors, and finally they are beginning.

It will be interesting to see how the routing code is packaged into targeted use cases - we are just seeing the initial use cases now from Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent - like the route reflection control plane function, IP/ MPLS VPNs and others.

Despite the packet-processing performance achieved by Alcatel-Lucent using x86 processors, it should be noted that some functions like the control plane route reflection example only need compute power, not packet processing or packet-moving power.

There already is, and there will always be, a need for high performance for certain places in the network or for serving certain customers. And then there are places and customers where traffic can be handled with less performance.

As for what next for IP, the next 10 to 15 years will be spent moving to SDN- and NFV-architected networks, just as service providers have spent over 10 years moving from time-division multiplexing-based networks to packet-based ones, a transition yet to be finished.

Ray Mota, chief strategist and founder, ACG Research

Carriers have infrastructure that is complex and inflexible, which means they have to be risk-averse. They need to start transitioning their architecture so that they just program the service, not re-architect the network each time they have a new service. Having edge applications becoming more nimble and flexible is a start in the right direction. Alcatel-Lucent has decided to create a NFV edge product with a carrier-grade operating system.

It appears, based on what the company has stated, that it achieves faster performance than competitors' announcements.

Alcatel-Lucent is addressing a few areas: this is great for testing and proof of concepts, and an area of the market that doesn't need high capacity for routing, but it also introduces the potential to expand new markets in the webscaler space (that includes the large internet content providers and the leading hosting/ co-location companies).

You will see more and more IP domain products overlap into the IT domain; the organisationals and operations are lagging behind the technology but once service providers figure it out, only then will they have a more agile network.