Nortel Buzzboard

One of yesterday’s big announcements was the news that Verizon had chosen Nortel as a supplier for its next-generation metro network backbone. While the 4G/WiMAX/LTE news got more media coverage, some suggest it’s really this big win with Verizon that is fueling some of the “excitement” about Nortel.

The actual press release didn’t get into a lot of detail on the win, so some of the media coverage and spokesperson comments fill out some of the story a little more. Light Reading covered the story and talked to Philippe Morin, Nortel’s president of Metro Ethernet Networks. In the article, Philippe highlights how Verizon choosing PBB over MPLS is a big endorsement since “the biggest challenge they [Verizon] have is scale.”

Going back to the press release, the second paragraph states that Verizon will be deploying the Nortel “Metro Ethernet Routing Switch (MERS 8600). This platform provides Provider Backbone Bridge (PBB) technology, MPLS related technology, and the Metro Ethernet Manager (MEM) system. Verizon will be testing all the MERS technologies in its laboratories for use with its Ethernet-based networks, including the Switched Ethernet Services (SES) network.”

I pulled that paragraph directly from the release because there may be a bit of confusion with some parts of it:

• The “testing” mention doesn’t imply that this is a trail…it’s not. While Verizon will be specifically testing the MEM capabilities, this is a real deployment for a live network.
• MPLS is mentioned, which may seem odd if you follow Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet story. Nortel has always understood that many customers already have MPLS deployed. This MPLS reference highlights the fact that Nortel is enhancing our Carrier Ethernet solution with additional MPLS interworking capabilities — some of which are to specifically address the requirements Verizon communicated to us.