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ROUTERS: This Viewfinder Is Good!

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update

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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

EXPERTS

PANEL

Java

Girdhar,
country manager (India and SAARC), Juniper Networks

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