Nokia today launched the Nokia ASR 2020 leased-line IP router for ANSI service-provider markets, initially targeted at the US and Canada leased-line IP aggregation business. The Nokia ASR 2020 aggregates large volumes of leased line traffic in a compact form factor and delivers industry-leading 'five-nines' (99.999%) service availability.
The Nokia ASR 2020 offers carrier-class fault tolerance, reliability and availability. Moreover, the Nokia ASR 2020 delivers multiservice network services, including Frame Relay and private lease line over IP/MPLS, and creates a new benchmark in density and scalability.
Powered by the AmbOS(TM) fault tolerant operating system software, the Nokia ASR 2020 is designed to deliver SONET-grade service resiliency in IP networks. The AmbOS(TM) is the first router operating system to deliver full route state redundancy for Internet routing protocols including BGP, IS-IS, and OSPF. This redundancy yields aggregation routers that are always reachable, always available, and not impacted by component failures. The fault tolerance allows all services transported over layer 3 (IP) to achieve "five-nines" service availability.
The Nokia ASR 2020 provides the scalability benchmark for the industry. It provides world-class densities regardless of whether the carrier needs to terminate FT1, T1 or T3 connections, offering for example more than 10,000 T1 ports in a standard seven-foot telco rack. The Nokia ASR 2020 is also equally scalable for termination of a large number of IP and Frame Relay logical subscribers.
The inherent flexibility of the ASR 2020 allows carriers to deploy the equipment in central offices or large POPs (Points of Presence) as well as in high-capacity Mega POPs.
"With the industry's leading 'five-nines' service availability and unequalled fault tolerance, the Nokia ASR 2020 helps tackle the critical point of failure problem in today's carrier leased-line aggregation business - by bringing true resiliency and reliability to IP networks," comments Mark Slater, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Broadband Systems, Nokia. "This product is the first step in bringing intelligence to the network edge."
Nokia is the world leader in mobile communications. Backed by its experience, innovation, user-friendliness and secure solutions, the company has become the leading supplier of mobile phones and a leading supplier of mobile, fixed broadband and IP networks. By adding mobility to the Internet, Nokia creates new opportunities for companies and further enriches the daily lives of people. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on six major exchanges.
Further information:
Cherie Gary, Nokia Inc. Corporate Communications (Americas)
Tel. +1 972 894 6146 (office)
cherie.gary@nokia.com
Communications Department, Nokia Networks
Tel. +358 7180 38195
nokia.networks@nokia.com
www.nokia.com
Notes to editors
The Nokia ASR 2020
The Nokia ASR 2020 is based on the Amber ASR 2020 from Amber Networks, acquired by Nokia in July 2001.
'Five-nines' availability
Five-nines means 99.999% availability/reliability of the platform, including hardware and software. This is an industry benchmark for the highest availability and reliability.
Leased lines
A leased line is a permanent communication connection between two points set up by a carrier or service provider. Typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices. Unlike normal dial-up connections, a leased line is always active. The fee for the connection is a fixed monthly rate. The primary factors affecting the monthly fee are distance between end points and the speed of the circuit. Because the connection doesn't carry anybody else's communications, the carrier can assure a given level of quality.
The connection can be divided into different lines for data and voice communication or use the channel for one high-speed data circuit. Dividing the connection is called multiplexing. Increasingly, leased lines are being used by companies, and even individuals, for Internet access because they afford faster data transfer rates and are cost-effective if the Internet is used heavily.
Leased line aggregation means collecting hundreds of leased lines and running them over an IP network. This enables the carrier to use fewer, but fatter, pipes for a service and therefore it is easier to provision and maintain the leased-line service.
MPLS
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an IETF (International Engineering Task Force) initiative that integrates Layer 2 information about network links (bandwidth, latency, utilization) into Layer 3 (IP) within a particular autonomous system - such as an ISP - in order to simplify and improve IP-packet exchange. MPLS gives network operators a great deal of flexibility to divert and route traffic around link failures, congestion, and bottlenecks.
BGP
Border Gateway Protocol is an Internet protocol that enables groups of routers (called autonomous systems) to share routing information so that efficient, loop-free routes can be established. BGP is commonly used within and between Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The protocol is defined in RFC 1771.
IS-IS
Intermediate System to Intermediate System is a protocol of the network layer. It permits intermediate systems within a routing domain to exchange configuration and routing information in order to facilitate the operation of the routing and relaying functions of the network layer. IS-IS is designed to operate in close conjunction with ES-IS (ISO 9542) and CLNS (ISO 8473).
OSPF
Short for Open Shortest Path First, a routing protocol developed for IP networks based on the shortest-path-first or link-state algorithm. Routers use link-state algorithms to send routing information to all nodes in an internetwork by calculating the shortest path to each node based on a topography of the Internet constructed by each node. Each router sends that portion of the routing table (keeps track of routes to particular network destinations) that describes the state of its own links, and it also sends the complete routing structure (topography). The advantage of shortest-path-first algorithms is that they result in smaller more frequent updates everywhere. They converge quickly, thus preventing such problems as routing loops and Count-to-Infinity (when routers continuously increment the hop count to a particular network). This makes for a stable network.
OSPF Version 2 is defined in RFC 1583. It is rapidly replacing RIP on the Internet.
POPs /Mega POPs
Point of Presence, a telephone number that provides dial-up access. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) generally provide many POPs so that users can make a local call to gain Internet access
T1
T1 is a dedicated telecom connection supporting data rates of 1.544 Mbits per second. T1 is an ANSI standard, equivalent in the ETSI standards to the E1 standard. A T1 line actually consists of 24 individual channels, each of which supports 64 Kbits per second. Each 64 Kbit/s channel can be configured to carry voice or data traffic. Most telephone companies allow their end-users to buy just some of these individual channels, known as fractional T1 access.
T1 lines are a popular leased-line option for businesses connecting to the Internet and for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) connecting to the Internet backbone. The Internet backbone itself consists of faster T3 connections. T1 lines are sometimes referred to as DS1 lines.
FT1
Fractional T1. Businesses are able to buy a number of 64k lines or part of a T1, generally for cost reasons.
T3
T3 is a dedicated telecom connection supporting data rates of 45 Mbits per second. A T3 consists of up to 28 T1s.