Redback hikes speed, smarts of broadband box

Redback Networks on Monday updated its SmartEdge Service Gateway with an eye on investment protection for carriers, offering interface modules for its existing chassis with higher performance and more advanced service features.

The new parts include four-port, 10-port, and 20-port Gigabit Ethernet interface blades and a module with one 10-gigabit Ethernet port. The chassis’ internal connections on the current SmartEdge platform, which debuted as an edge router in 2002, are already fast enough for the new modules, according to Marco Wanders, chief marketing officer at Redback, in San Jose, California.

The SmartEdge is designed to handle IP (Internet Protocol) traffic from DSL (digital subscriber line), fiber-to-the-home and other broadband networks. The new modules boost the total capacity of the chassis by four times, to 240Gbps from the previous 60Gbps. The platform can now provide a 3Mbps service to as many as 48,000 subscribers, though typically it will be used to support a smaller number of subscribers at higher speeds, according to Redback.

However, the update has just as much to do with improving carriers’ ability to offer new kinds of services to consumer and enterprise broadband subscribers. Redback expects video and online games to be the biggest drivers of new demands on broadband networks over the next few years, Wanders said. To meet subscribers’ demands for consistently high-quality video streams, the new modules were designed to adjust the bandwidth to match whatever service a particular subscriber is using. It also has features to minimize delay and jitter in video and voice applications, he said.

Redback’s platform is already being used for consumer IP video services by some providers, such as Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom and Moscow City Telephone Network, Wanders said. Among other Redback customers are heavyweights BellSouth and Korea Telecom.

The SmartEdge can also be used as a platform for carrier Ethernet services to enterprises. It lets service providers dole out bandwidth to a subscriber in increments of less than 1Mbps and even pass on that provisioning capability to the subscribers themselves, Wanders said. To separate one enterprise’s service from another’s, carriers can set up as many as 64,000 separate virtual LANs on a SmartEdge.

At the heart of the SmartEdge is Redback’s Broadband IP Engine, an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) developed by Redback that Wanders said is fully programmable. Redback is taking the same strategy with this chip as it did with the last generation, the Packet Processing ASIC, which has been continually updated with new features for about two and a half years, he said. The vendor will even add features to a carrier’s SmartEdge remotely over a network connection, eliminating the need to take the system out of service for an upgrade, according to Redback.

The Broadband IP Engine is made up of 32 custom processors, allowing the service provider to allocate the right number of processors to each of several functions, Wanders said. For example, a carrier could program four processors to carry out security tasks, eight to perform quality-of-service functions and four for deep packet inspection for use in prioritizing applications or providing a firewall service, devoting the rest to other functions, he said.

Redback is gaining on competitors that have broader product lines, namely Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, by staying about six months ahead of them in technology, according to Synergy Research Group analyst Ray Mota. But in giving customers a way to build on the current chassis, the company has taken a page from Cisco’s playbook, he said.

“That was very successful for Cisco with the Catalyst line,” Mota said. “Cisco sets the bar. You have to either follow it or go above it.”

Higher capacity and the kinds of quality-of-service tools Redback is coming out with will be increasingly important as IP video services take hold over the coming years, Mota said.

“In the past we’ve always had Internet demand increases, but now it’s increasing even more with video,” Mota said. Moreover, users are even less tolerant of quality problems with video than they are with voice calls, he added.

The new SmartEdge modules will ship in June. A SmartEdge with a typical entry-level configuration costs about $25,000, with prices ranging up to about $500,000, according to Redback’s Wanders.