Alcatel-Lucent is taking the development of the long-term evolution (LTE) packet core out of the hands of its mobile networks division, choosing instead to leverage the skills of its wireline IP routing group to build the next-generation IP architecture. The company introduced its evolved packet core (EPC) architecture, which is built on the back of the 7750 Service Router, 30,000 of which already sit in the wireline networks of operators around the world.
“At a platform level, there are quite a number of ways you can differentiate,” said Lindsay Newell, vice president of marketing for all things IP at Alcatel-Lucent. “We believe this router based approach is the most effective.”
The approach is a departure from the usual method of developing mobile core infrastructure, which centers on producing specialized gateways, designed to perform specific functions in the network core. Alcatel-Lucent isn’t just tossing its standard IP edge or service router into the wireless network, though. The IP group has designed software to fit the various elements of EPC: the mobile management entity (MMA), the packet data node gateway (P-gateway) and the (S-gateway). But instead of building specific hardware around these functions, it is plugging them into what amounts to a generic router—albeit a highly scalable one.
Newell said Alcatel-Lucent felt it pointless to create specialty routers for the 4G network, when it had proven technology on hand. Furthermore, he said, the 7750 platform is a network workhorse, and only an extremely high-capacity router can handle what is expected to be a massive influx in traffic from a future mobile broadband deployment. LTE won’t just provide more bandwidth; that bandwidth will open the door to new applications that haven’t been used effectively on 3G networks due to lack of capacity. Newell predicted that multimedia applications will flourish on LTE networks, and they, in turn, will need to be managed by routers with enormous packet processing capabilities. The evolved packet core will not only have to handle jitter and delay, but eventually incorporate very refined levels of quality of service (QoS) as well as deep packet inspection (DPI) technologies.
“The network, particularly the IP gateway, has to be able to distinguish between hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of flows,” Newell said. “It has to have a policy manager that can keep track of those session flows and ensure the right characteristics are available to each session in flow. It’s a question of sheer scale.”
Alcatel-Lucent likely won’t be the only vendor to take a router-based approach. Ericsson bought IP networking vendor Redback Networks in 2007, and quickly set its new business division to the task of developing high-capacity mobile edge routers. Many vendors, however, are sticking with specialized element approach to the mobile core, evolving their 3G gateways into individual 4G core elements. Starent Networks has emerged as one such specialist in the core gateway field, not just in 4G but 3G. In fact, vendors like Motorola have opted to resell Starent’s EPC so they can focus on the radio access network.
Alcatel-Lucent is coming off of a big win with Verizon Wireless to build that carrier’s LTE radio access network, packet core and IP multimedia subsystem architecture, so it’s pulling out all of the LTE stops at CTIA Wireless. Along with announcing its EPC platform today, on Tuesday Alcatel-Lucent unveiled a new CDMA base station software-upgradable to LTE, the first multi-mode CDMA base station in the industry.
