By now, all of our readers are sure to know all about AT&Ts supply chain streamlining and their break from the two vendor rule in the IP core. Juniper, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent will all provide equipment for the carriers wireline and wireless IP core.
Rounding out the coverage of this announcement from AT&T are a couple more posts we found interesting:
First, :Rethink Wireless has some cool numbers regarding the scale of AT&Ts IP core:
The carrier says the project will eventually support routing and forwarding of packets across 880,000 route miles of fiber, carrying an average 18.7 petabytes a day. It will also include the packet core for managing LTE traffic in future.
They further note that “Reports indicated that Juniper was likely to major on IP, MPLS and Ethernet,” no surprises there!
A Connected Planet post focuses on the convergence of wireline and wireless cores within AT&Ts network:
The domain covers all of the equipment used to forward and route IP voice, data and video traffic across AT&T’s extensive collection of networks… But the domain also includes AT&T’s future EPC [Evolved Packet Core], the central IP network linking the tens of thousands of long-term evolution (LTE) base stations in its planned 4G network. Typically wireline and wireless cores are kept distinct, but unifying them under a single domain may signal AT&T’s intent of creating a single core and transport network that links its disparate access technologies.
The author goes on to point out ALUs distinct advantage in 4G wireless networks:
Alcatel-Lucent does appear to have an inside track with the 4G core, though, as AT&T named ALU as a radio domain vendor. Alcatel-Lucent will be able to supply an end-to-end solution from cell tower to P-gateway while the others will not.
