[March 18, 2013]

EANTC Independently Tested Multi-Vendor Integration of Software-Defined Networks with Carrier Ethernet, IPv6, and MPLS for the First Time Worldwide

EANTC AG (European Advanced Networking Test Center) announced the results of the latest EANTC interoperability event today, which will be publicly showcased live at the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress in Paris this week. The test of 36 device types from 19 vendors serves as a proof-of-concept study for network operators, validating the state of the art in packet network innovation.

AimValley, Alcatel-Lucent, Broadcom, BTI Systems (News - Alert), Calnex Solutions, Cisco, ECI Telecom, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Hitachi, Huawei, Ixia, Juniper Networks, NEC, OE Solutions, Spirent Communications, and Symmetricom (News - Alert) participated in the showcase and the preceding hot-staging. More than forty-five engineers worked with EANTC's team for three full weeks at EANTC lab in Berlin, Germany.

EANTC confirmed interoperability of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 implementations of performance monitoring per class of service, an important solution enabling service providers to commit to strict application-specific service levels. In addition, service activation testing according to ITU Y.1564 was a focus area promising reduced field support cost while guaranteeing proper Ethernet service operations from the start.

The inclusion of advanced CPE devices in the IPv6 protocol and migration test scenarios took IPv6 one step further towards user-optimized solutions for Service Provider. New solutions to overcome routing table scalability issues were tested successfully.

For thefirst time, EANTC evaluated Ethernet VPNs (EVPNs), a technology in its early stages. This technology is a potential successor of VPLS, promising to advance Ethernet multi-point services in the future.

There is a continued definite market need for packet-clock frequency and phase synchronization of mobile backhaul networks. With further LTE (News - Alert) deployment and small cells coming into the picture, packet-clock frequency and phase synchronization of mobile backhaul networks becomes more crucial. Participating vendors pushed the limits in testing of boundary clocks, transparent clocks, SyncE islands and Transparent SDH over packet (TSoP).

MPLS continues to evolve. Next Generation MPLS Multicast VPNs (NG MVPN) were focused, fully integrated with multicast traffic for the first time. MPLS-TP resiliency scenarios continued to receive vendor interest as well.

OpenFlow was the selected management protocol for Software Defined Networks (SDN) at the interoperability test. Five vendors participated in the first European public test, focusing service provider use cases for SDN such as policy routing, layer 2/3 forwarding and topology discovery. Advanced OpenFlow 1.2 scenarios were demonstrated as well.

"We proudly organized the first public SDN interoperability test event in Europe, simultaneously being the first showcase worldwide integrating SDN with established MPLS, Carrier Ethernet, Mobile Backhaul, and IPv6 technologies," said Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director, EANTC. "At the event, we validated tangible use cases that service providers can utilize as wide area network design blue prints," Carsten explained further.

The extensive 28-page white paper provides detailed information about all results, test set-ups and analyses. It is available free of charge at

http://www.eantc.com/mplsewc2013.

About EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers vendor-neutral consultancy and test facilities for network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability, conformance, and performance testing for Carrier Ethernet, IP/MPLS, and Triple Play (News - Alert) technologies and applications.

http://www.eantc.com

Company or product names mentioned in this release are trademarks of their respective companies.

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