The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR platform provides purpose-built, highly available software and hardware architectures that allow network operators to “right-size” their service infrastructure buildout. The 7750 SR provides the necessary built-in services capabilities and packet processing headroom to allow service providers to scale service instances, subscriber count and bandwidth without incurring exponential capital or operating expenditures (CAPEX or OPEX).
The critical features and functions that differentiate the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR from a typical Internet-era edge router are the system characteristics (delay/jitter) and service-related capabilities that were tightly integrated into the product architecture at inception.
The change from traditional best-effort Internet routing and enterprise switching to true service routing is not an incremental step — it is a radical advancement that has required a complete rethinking of the product architecture and design at inception. This inflection point is where the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR has established a leadership position.
An Industry First
The challenges that service providers are facing have evolved from addressing rampant bandwidth growth for Internet traffic to enabling cost-optimized and highly resilient service delivery infrastructures that can scale and ensure profitability while minimizing the overall deployment risk in the long run.
Existing Internet-era routers and enterprise switches were designed five to eight years ago to handle bandwidth growth for best-effort traffic. These platforms were not optimized for new-generation service infrastructure rollouts, as they are limited by their system characteristics (delay/jitter, packet re-ordering and loss) and their inability to scale services across all dimensions (number of interfaces, bandwidth, service instances and policies, performance level, etc.).
Similarly, so-called IP service platforms have appeared on the market, but they were designed and optimized for low-speed, best- effort consumer services (mass-market digital subscriber line [DSL] for residential service). They do not have the high-availability, scalability or service capabilities that will allow them to cost-effectively enable large- scale (tens of millions of customers), high- speed data, voice and video service rollouts.
