MPLS 2006 to Showcase Current State of Multiservice Interworking and Multicast Applications Delivery Across Resilient, Hybrid Optical Transport Network.

Isocore Demonstrates Industry's First Comprehensive Multiservice Interworking, IPTV across Carrier Ethernet Infrastructure, Inter-Provider L2/L3 Services, and IPv6-Enabled VPNs

RESTON, Va. -- Isocore, the technology validation leader in next generation IP and optical networking, services and applications, today announced the successful completion of its fall 2006 Leading Edge Code (LEC) Testing. The event included participation from a broad range of industry-leading network equipment vendors. The results of this successful testing will be demonstrated live at Isocore Internetworking Lab on October 19th following 9th MPLS International Conference (MPLS 2006) (www.mpls2006.com).

Vendors participating in the Isocore LEC testing included Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A), Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA, NYSE: ALA), Anue Systems, Avici Systems (NASDAQ: AVCI), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), IXIA (NASDAQ: XXIA), Extreme Networks (NASDAQ: EXTR), Foundry Networks (NASDAQ: FDRY), IPInfusion (An ACCESS Company), Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR), Redback Networks (NASDAQ: RBAK). Vendors participating in the Hybrid Optical LEC testing included Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR), Keio, NTT-AT, and Sycamore Networks (NASDAQ: SCMR), and on-site participation and support by NTT.

During this testing, multiservice interworking of ATM-Ethernet was verified for the first time within the context of hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) supporting delivery of high and standard definition Video on Demand (VoD) services. In addition, real time MDI (Media Delivery Index), measurements were made for MPEG encoded video Streams carried over MPLS P2MP LSP in carrier Ethernet environment. As part of Isocore's commitment to the integration of Ethernet services evaluation, the MPLS 2006 demonstration will showcase, for the first time, two flavors of implementing VPLS based services, one using LDP based signaling, and other using BGP based signaling.

The fall LEC testing also featured verification of the functionality of carrying T1 services across MPLS core network using structure-Agnostic Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) over Packet (SAToP) using pseudowire emulation as defined by IETF. Also during the testing Diff-serve aware traffic engineering, a critical component required for QoS based voice delivery across MPLS enabled networks was tested. Bi-directional Forwarding Detection (BFD), and Fast Reroute techniques were evaluated to support fast recovery from network failures. The testing also included successful verification of the ability of the participating vendor equipment to support IPv6 extensions for L3 BGP-based VPNs in a multi-vendor environment.

A key objective in this event was to verify the ability of the optical transport network to recover from control plane failures using Graceful restart mechanisms as defined for IETF-based Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) signaling. It was successfully demonstrated that services carried across GMPLS Label Switched Paths (LSP) were not affected by control plane failures, and implementations were interoperable. Additionally, this was the first time that graceful recovery mechanisms were verified for dynamically signaled 10 Gigabit Ethernet over SONET LSPs. The event also verified GMPLS UNI models and MPLS to GMPLS migration strategies that are critical in the realization of Layer 1 VPNs.

About Isocore

The goal of Isocore Internetworking Lab is to advance networking technology through validation and product evaluation. For more information visit http://www.isocore.com and to download reports visit www.isocore.com/papers2.htm.