Ixia has joined Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem initiative as a key test solution supplier. Ixia and Nortel will cooperate to ensure cross-vendor compatibility with new protocols for Carrier Ethernet deployments including PBB (Provider Backbone Bridging) and PBB-TE (PBB-Traffic Engineering).
The promise of Carrier Ethernet is to provide high-speed, low-cost, easily managed core networks operating at Layer 2 that provide all of the services that have been performed by IP networks. Current Metro Ethernet networks allow customer-separated services, but with a catch – only 4,096 distinct customers can be supported.
Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem provides Service Providers the ability to create and extend Carrier Ethernet using lower-cost, high-bandwidth switches. PBB and PBB-TE are key protocols that make this possible. PBB allows virtually unlimited numbers of individuated customers on a network. PBB-TE (IEEE 802.1Qay), proposed by Nortel, answers the needs for Triple-Play traffic separation and protocol-agnostic tunneling.
With its recent IxNetwork product release, Ixia introduces PBB/PBB-TE, Ethernet OAM/CFM and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) testing support. Ixia’s PBB/PBB-TE capability is part of its new comprehensive Carrier Ethernet Test Solution and it is the first to verify both PBB/PBB-TE and MPLS-based Carrier Ethernet.
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