Return on Investment (RoI) is the most crucial factor as far as telecom
spending on routers is concerned. With finance limited and rollout requirements
massive, operators want to get full value out of every penny spent. RoI from
routers are being looked at in terms of routers’ basic routing performance and
the ability to support various services without taxing the performance of the
network. Not only the capex has to be the main concern, service providers have
to pay attention to opex as well. The hidden costs can be the biggest headache
when it comes to technology expenses. Some of the RoI issues that should come up
during a router purchase are: What is the price of bringing in more redundancy
in the network? What are the expenses involved in memory upgrades? What are the
licences attached to feature additions?
Buying Tips
n Stability: When
it comes to routers in the context of a telco, this is the most important
aspect. In a live public network, the best of routers are really tested. The
quality of Internet services and other packet services is a function of how
routers on the operator’s network perform. This selection criteria is
certainly going to become all the more crucial in router purchase as operators
look forward to differentiate their services through better quality of services,
differential grades of services, managed packet services such as MPLS-based VPNs.
As more customers demand service level agreements, network faults and downtimes
are not being tolerated. This means that service providers have to see that the
routers that form the backbone of the network are not down and if they are down,
there is a backup. Backups are costly. So, redundancy should be built into the
router that is implemented. The router must be highly available with hitless
fail over, port redundancy and module redundancy. Nowadays, routers that
separate the routing and forwarding functionalities are in demand as this
reduces the risk of downtimes. The router should be able to handle unstable
network conditions such as sudden surge in bandwidth usage, route bottlenecks,
etc. Also, it should be capable of handling denial of service (DOS) attacks.
n Reliability:
Look for reliability at all levels: box level, node level and link level.
The product should be able to turn on service without degrading the performance
of the network. MPLS-capability is a must at the core of the network–ensure
the routers are capable of MPLS. The router should be able to give line rate
performance. The same line card should be able to single-handedly turn on a
variety of services.
n Scalability:
One needs to check out the number of routes that can be handled, and the
number of VPNs that can be supported. Port density (physical and logical) is an
important criterion. The router should be able to support very hi-bandwidths viz
STM16 and STM64, etc. And the router should be able to support as many of them
from a single box.
n Modularity: An
idle link is inventory for service providers. So, adding network capacity as you
grow is a preferred practice. While adding resources, capability to do online
insertion and removal of modules is a great feature as you don’t have to turn
off a router to upgrade it. This is essential, telecom being a 24x7 sector.
Also, one must ensure the router has support for a range of interfaces, so that
there can be and mix n match of interfaces.
n Features: This
is the factor that will decide how your services will be different from others.
It is not only important that the router supports as many features as possible,
it must also boast of those features that really helps in building value to the
services. Some features that ought to be looked for are L3 VPNs, L2 VPNs
(Ethernet over MPLS, Frame Relay over MPLS, ATM over MPLS, PPP over MPLS, HDLC
over MPLS), VPLS, IPSec encryption, QoS (differentiated services), customer self
provisioning, etc.
n Benchmarks: Just
as you meticulously planned your network’s configuration as a whole, you
should give close scrutiny to what you want your routers to do and where you
expect them to do it. There will be a premium to be paid if 99.999 is to be
enabled. It’s a tradeoff between price and quality of service.
Few real standards exist for routers. This lack of a solid means of
comparison of competing devices, added to the continually growing role that
routers play in allowing dissimilar networks to communicate, makes router
modeling even more important. When you consider the cost of networking hardware
and the investment of time that installing and fine-tuning it represents, having
a reasonable idea up-front of how routers can be expected to perform in your
environment is practically critical.
Benchmarks that can be referred to are of two types–commercial and
technical.
n Commercial
Case Studies: Look at successful implementation of routers by similar
service providers. Here, the vendors and integrators would play a major role.
Most companies maintain a dossier of case studies for reference. Get deeper
information about the previous cases.
Look Beyond Price: Price should not be the ultimate decider. A
reliable router makes up for the premium paid in no time. On the other hand, a
cheaper unreliable router can become a major bottleneck. If the requirement
parameters are not taken care of, the final spend becomes more than the premium
that would have been paid in the first hand.
n Technical
Standards: See that the routers meet the compliance parameters set by
Bellcore. Network equipment building system (NEBS) GR-63 and GR-1089 have been
the de facto benchmarks for the industry for more than two decades. They have
been used to verify that products are truly carrier-class, installation-ready,
and equipment compatible. Compliance to these test parameters of Bellcore
demonstrates that the equipment has been thoroughly tested for safety and
functional criteria for use in telecommunications networks. Also, check the
products against standards required or developed by organizations such as the
FCC, CISPR, IEC, IEEE, ASTM, ANSI, and ETSI.
Independent Tests: Check out the currently done router tests by
independent labs like Light Reading (www.lightreading.com
) and Tolly Group (www.tolly.com).
First-hand Testing: Doing a first-hand test is extremely critical. Router
testers are available from test and measurement companies like Agilent, which
can generate routers and instability in test beds. Customers can also test
products at vendors’ premises.
Market Information
The carrier-class router market has two dominant players–Cisco and
Juniper. These two command more than 90 percent of the worldwide market. The
rest of the market is shared by other players like Redback and Nortel.
In India too, the dominance of Cisco and Juniper is reflected. Juniper has
won major deals from BSNL and Data Access.
|
|