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Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Carrier Ethernet Business Services With Industry's First Integrated Provider Backbone Bridging/Virtual Private LAN Service Offering

Posted on: Tuesday, 17 June 2008, 09:00 CDT

PARIS, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext: Paris and NYSE: ALU) today reinforced its market and technological leadership in Carrier Ethernet by announcing the industry's first integration of Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) technologies, which dramatically increases the scale and reach of Carrier Ethernet VPN services. These new capabilities offered on Alcatel-Lucent's IP/MPLS Service Router portfolio, will help service providers differentiate themselves and meet the predicted exponential growth for Carrier Ethernet services.

The integrated PBB/VPLS solution combines the scalability benefits of PBB and the resiliency, traffic engineering and convergence benefits of VPLS and MPLS, enabling carriers to leverage their existing metro Ethernet infrastructure while expanding their service reach to national and international markets. Combined with the recent announcement of terabit performance upgrades for the 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) and 7750 Service Router (SR), these new innovations offer service providers substantial investment protection and ensure lower capital and operating costs.

"With our All-IP strategy and extensive network, KPN is a leader in delivering cost effective, high performance Ethernet VPN services to our customers. Alcatel-Lucent's integrated PBB and VPLS solution will enable us to enhance network and service scalability -- both in terms of reach and MAC addressing -- supporting the expansion of our multipoint Carrier Ethernet VPN service offerings for inter-metro and national coverage," said Sicco Wiersma, Manager Innovation Networks, KPN.

"With this simple software upgrade to the 7750 SR and 7450 ESS, we can grow our EVPN revenue and benefit from operational cost efficiencies while ensuring faster time to market for new Carrier Ethernet services," Wiersma added.

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent - in conjunction with KPN as well as other vendors and service providers -- have together taken an active role in standardizing Ethernet VPN services, for example collaborating on IETF draft-balus-l2vpn-vpls-802.1ah-02.txt, which defines VPLS Extensions for Provider Backbone Bridging.

Other capabilities introduced today on the Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS Service Router portfolio include broad support for IEEE Carrier Ethernet Operation Assurance and Management (OA&M) standards, which provide service assurance and reduce trouble-shooting time. In addition, Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) and 5650 Control Plane Access Manager (CPAM) enhancements provide extensive network and service provisioning and assurance features for deploying and managing Layer 2 and Layer 3 (L2/L3) VPN services in a uniform manner.

"Demand for Carrier Ethernet services is increasing rapidly together with the market for Carrier Ethernet Switch Routers (CESR), which has grown from $179 million in 2004 to $1.9 billion in 2007. By introducing the industry's first integrated PBB and VPLS solution on its service routing portfolio, Alcatel-Lucent is at the forefront of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 capabilities, enabling operators to scale their carrier Ethernet services efficiently and meet enterprise business requirements. Alcatel-Lucent is also reinforcing its leadership in Operations, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAM&P) with the newly announced assurance capabilities." said Stan Hubbard, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading.

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent today introduced support for DSL-based IP VPNs, leveraging support for Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) and eliminating the need for a separate Broadband Remote Access Server (B-RAS) when using DSL to deliver VPN services to small or medium business customers.

"With over 80 service providers worldwide having deployed our Service Router portfolio for Layer 2 and Layer 3 business VPN services, Alcatel-Lucent has helped create and develop this market, establishing itself as a strategic partner for IP transformation," said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's IP activities. "These innovations position us for continued growth and help our customers expand their service offerings and differentiate themselves in the market."

Today's business services announcement is enabled by the following new product enhancements:

-- IEEE 802.1ah PBB support on the 7750 SR, 7710 SR and 7450 ESS. It includes PBB integration with MPLS and VPLS. This industry-first PBB/VPLS implementation enables market leading service scale while retaining the traffic engineering and resiliency benefits of MPLS and providing inter-operability with currently deployed native Ethernet and VPLS implementations. Many vendors support PBB on Ethernet Switches, while others support MPLS on routers. Alcatel-Lucent is first to integrate the two protocols on a single platform, combining the best of both worlds. -- Secure VPN services - The IPSec-Integrated Services Adapter (IPSec-ISA) enables service providers to extend their business VPN services offering to include secure VPN options for remote-access to L3 VPNs, secure site-to-site and secure network infrastructure services. -- PPPoE support for business VPN services - PPPoE is a protocol typically used in many DSL networks that allows a client (PC, routed gateway) to be connected to a B-RAS using a tunnel (PPP session) over an Ethernet path. PPPoE sessions can now be directly terminated on a subscriber interface of a L3 VPN or Internet Service on a 7750 SR, thus eliminating the need for a separate B-RAS when using DSL to deliver VPN services to small or medium business customers. -- IPv6 enhancements - IPv6 addressing support for Layer 3 VPNs (also known as 6VPE). This feature set will enable broader market applicability of the 7750 SR in Asian and other early adopter IPv6 markets and allow service providers to expand their IPv6 based service offerings. -- IEEE 802.1ag Connectivity Fault Management (CFM) - This standards based interoperable OA&M capability enables service providers to proactively monitor and troubleshoot services on an end-to-end basis and thus allow them to offer stricter Service Level Agreements to their customers -- 5620 SAM and 5650 CPAM provide extensive network & service provisioning and assurance features for deploying and managing L2/L3 VPN services in a uniform manner.

Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS solutions have been selected by more than 200 service providers in more than 90 countries. During the first quarter of 2008, Alcatel-Lucent reinforced its #2 position in IP/MPLS edge garnering 18% of the market according to Ovum-RHK. For more information, please visit: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/ipnews

About Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprise and governments worldwide, to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. As a leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions that enable compelling communications services for people at home, at work and on the move. With operations in more than 130 countries, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The company has the most experienced global services team in the industry, and one of the largest research, technology and innovation organizations in the telecommunications industry. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 17.8 billion in 2007 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/

Alcatel-Lucent

CONTACT: Alcatel-Lucent Press Contacts, Regine Coqueran,+33 1-40-76-49-24, regine.coqueran@alcatel-lucent.com, Mark Burnworth,+33 1-40-76-50-84, mark.burnworth@alcatel-lucent.com, or Mary Ward,+1-908-582-7658, mary.ward@alcatel-lucent.com; Alcatel-Lucent InvestorRelations, Remi Thomas, + 33 1-40-76-50-61,remi.thomas@alcatel-lucent.com, John DeBono, +1-908-582-7793,debono@alcatel-lucent.com, Tony Lucido, + 33 1-40-76-49-80,alucido@alcatel-lucent.com, or Don Sweeney, +1-908-582-6153,dsweeney@alcatel-lucent.com

Web site: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/ipnews

Source: PRNewswire

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