With the Brooklyn-10 and Hudson large-scale networking chips from Lightstorm
Networks, designers can use carrier Ethernet to replace existing Sonet/SDH and
ATM/frame-relay infrastructures. The Hudson is an operations, administration, and
maintenance (OAM) service accelerator or coprocessor for the Brooklyn-10 carriergrade,
20-Gbit/s layer 2 switch.
Carrier Ethernet is scalable. It provides service management, quality of service,
protection, and voice and circuit emulation support for time-division multiplexing
(TDM). Because of its lower cost, more and more metro-area networks (MANs) are
moving to carrier Ethernet to replace existing or new infrastructure now using ATM,
frame relay, or Sonet/SDH. With more affordable 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) and
the forthcoming 100-Gigabit Ethernet, expect more carrier Ethernet. If you’re designing
carrier Ethernet switches or other MAN/wide-area network (WAN) equipment, these chips are definitely worth a look
(see the figure).
The Brooklyn-10 eliminates the
complex network processors in older
designs that require programming. This
register-configurable ASSP hard-wires
a 20-Gbit/s carrier Ethernet layer 2
switch. The chip has an integrated traffic
manager and supports frame sizes from
64 bytes to 9216-byte jumbo frames. It’s
used with the Solas software suite and
fully complies with all relevant IEEE,
IETF, and ITU standards in addition to
MEF 9 and MEF 14 specifications.
The Hudson chip offloads the control
processor from the generation, reception,
and processing of the high-frequency
connectivity check messages (CCMs)
by abstracting the software requirements
into a low-cost standard FPGA. The
Hudson FPGA increases the number of
maintenance associations (MAs) that
can be accommodated for monitoring
the health and performance of Ethernet
virtual connections (EVCs). Hudson
supports the IEEE 802.1ag CFM, ITU
Y.1731, and IETF VCCV standards.
The Brooklyn-10 and the Hudson will
be generally available in the first quarter
of 2008.
