Alcatel-Lucent (search for Alcatel-Lucent) is expanding its packet-optical transport offering with the commercial availability of Transport Multi-Protocol Label Switching (search for T-MPLS) on its 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS). The T-MPLS capabilities, which will smoothly align to MPLS-TP when the standards are finalized, are designed to help service providers enhance their transport networks and address the growing demand for carrier Ethernet-based services, including mobile backhaul, enterprise broadband, and residential triple play, says the company.

The enhancements to the 1850 TSS support the evolution of Alcatel-Lucent's Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA), the company's blueprint architecture to accelerate IP network transformation for delivery of video, voice, data, and entertainment services. According to Alcatel-Lucent, the announced innovations strengthen TPSDA by introducing advanced transport features such as resiliency, protection, and advanced operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) that optimize service delivery between the access and aggregation layers. Alcatel-Lucent is also enhancing its 1850 TSS product portfolio with a new chassis and broadening the range of supported applications to scale from the metro/regional core to the customer premises.

"Packet-based applications are driving service providers to transform their transport networks, migrating to packet-optical transport," explains Sterling Perrin, senior analyst, optical networking at Heavy Reading. "These converged packet-optical transport products will require connection-oriented Ethernet to make the SONET/SDH-to-Ethernet migration possible. T-MPLS today, with a path to MPLS-TP as it becomes standard, is the logical evolution path for this connection-oriented Ethernet technology," he says.

More than 10 large operators, including China Mobile, are trialing T-MPLS capabilities over the 1850 TSS. With the availability of integrated T-MPLS capabilities, Alcatel-Lucent believes it is further endorsing its commitment and support on the standardization efforts achieved by the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

"Alcatel-Lucent continues to enhance its portfolio to help operators migrate to packet-optical transport with maximum leverage for their installed networks and operations," notes Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel-Lucent's Optics activities. "As the market leader in optical transport, Alcatel-Lucent is committed to enabling seamless IP transformation of transport networks."
Available today are:

• Release 3.0 of the Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-320 with integrated T-MPLS capabilities;
• The Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-160, a compact chassis for scaling down in the metro edge/core;
• Enriched TDM and Ethernet features in the metro edge/core of the network with Release 3.0 of the Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-100;
• Enhanced packet ring transport capabilities with the Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-40;
• Enriched Ethernet functionality for the Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-5; and
• Intelligent Ethernet demarcation for end-to-end Ethernet services support with carrier-class operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) and quality of service (QoS) using the Alcatel-Lucent 1850 TSS-3.

All these enhancements meet the requirements of high-availability, performance monitoring, and multi-domain capabilities for large-scale transport networks and provide carriers with benefits in terms of operational practices, claim Alcatel-Lucent representatives.

Visit Alcatel-Lucent