 |
|
DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / OCTOBER 6, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 40
|
Breaking News -
Networking:
Marconi Sells More BXR-48000s To
Federal Government
Marconi Corporation, through its United States subsidiary, Marconi
Communications Federal Inc, announced the sale of several BXR-48000
multiservice switch-routers to the United States Federal government. This
sale, worth about $9 million, includes both hardware and installation services
for the BXR-48000s. Further details were not made public.
These additional BXR-48000s will help to support the stringent
military-grade
next-generation communications requirements of the government. Over the
government's past financial year, the sale of Marconi's multiservice
networking equipment supporting specific mission-critical federal applications
has increased by over 20 percent. This is in addition to Marconi's installed
base in the government of about $1.3 billion.
"Government customers have long understood that Marconi is a reliable
partner
able to support the most rigorous networking requirements in the world, yet do
it with a commercially-available platform. In that way, government customers
benefit from the business-tested economics of advanced networking technology
without risking the loss of specialized mission-critical functionality," said
Gerry Kolosvary, president of Marconi Communications Federal Inc. "Networks
carrying critical data and applications for national defense are not the place
for experimenting with untested solutions. Marconi combines battle-tested
advanced networking technology with years of practical experience to deliver a
secure, scalable and predictable strategy for converging voice, video and data
over an all-packet infrastructure in an immediately deployable solution."
The government bought the first of its BXR-48000s last autumn, a contract
that
was announced Sept. 18, 2002, and has also purchased Marconi's 10
Gb-per-second ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) interface for the BXR- 48000.
The 10 Gb-per-second interface supports Type 1 encryption, used to safeguard
the mission-critical applications that are required for secure government
communications across the world, including safeguarding the transport of real-
time video streams. This rate of encryption is the fastest speed currently
possible with commercially available technology. The government is currently
evaluating the IP/MPLS (Internet Protocol / Multiprotocol Label Switching)
capabilities of the BXR-48000.
Marconi's BXR-48000 is a 480 Gb-per-second switch-router with a patented,
payload agnostic striping architecture that eliminates the technological risk
associated with scaling next-generation multiservice packet networks. Designed
with the flexibility to operate as an all-IP router, an MPLS switch, an ATM
switch, or all three simultaneously, the BXR-48000 supports mission-critical
traffic and applications while allowing a smooth migration to a predictable
multiservice packet infrastructure at the discretion of network operators.
"Because the BXR-48000 was specially designed to switch either ATM or
IP/MPLS
simultaneously, it permits continuity of operations for current and legacy
applications in addition to allowing a smooth migration to pure IP networking
environments without requiring disruptive or costly forklift upgrades,"
Kolosvary said.
Recently, Marconi has provided the BXR-48000 for public displays of
advanced
networking solutions that demonstrated the switch-router's service flexibility
and support for mission-critical applications. At an event in Las Vegas in
May, the BXR-48000 participated in a demonstration showing that IP and ATM
data can be encrypted at a line rate of 10 Gigabits per second, the fastest
speed possible with commercially available technology. The event demonstrated
the feasibility of immediately deploying a high-speed yet secure,
next-generation network transporting legacy and IP applications.
Applications for such high-speed encryption over a global communications
grid
include safe-guarding the real-time control and harvest of surveillance data
from networked military, intelligence and security assets; protecting the
transport of high-definition video steams and distributed supercomputing; and
securing the integration of large storage files with real-time, desktop video
telephony, including multi-person and multi-site conferencing for
collaborative decision-making.
And, at SUPERCOMM 2003 in Atlanta, the BXR-48000 was demonstrated to show
its
flexibility, scalability and interoperability by concurrently transporting
MPLS-VPN traffic, Fast Reroute tunnels, Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS),
ATM, Frame Relay and Ethernet over MPLS in a multi-vendor network.
Only the ATM transport protocol will support the encryption of IP packet
and
TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) traffic at 10 Gb per second, the fastest
speed currently possible. IP traffic over Ethernet is limited to encryption
rates of 100 megabits per second, a speed similar to desktop PC
interconnectivity. Marconi also supports 100 Mbps encryption, but that
relatively slow encryption speed restricts the applications that can be
securely transported over a network.
Marconi's support for 10 Gbps encryption enhances its assured networking
solutions, which include support of Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) for
Simple Network Management Protocol, version 3, used by network operators --
particularly operators in the United States Federal government -- to encrypt
and secure the messages that manage network elements.
Marconi's support of 3DES for SNMPv3 adds to its support for a broad range
of
management plane security features -- including access control lists; user
authentication and registration protocols such as RADIUS, SecurID, and
Kerberos; and network protection features such as protection against Denial of
Service (DoS) attacks -- and control plane security features such as MD5
Authentication, Secure PNNI and AINI (ATM Inter-Network Interface).
|