Alcatel Lucent steps closer to 100 Gigabit Ethernet edge

Networking equipment vendor Alcatel Lucent has announced the availability of its first 100 Gigabit Ethernet service routing interface for edge routers.

The breakthrough follows Juniper's announcement last month of the first 100 Gigabit Ethernet interface for core routers.

The new interface has been developed for Alcatel Lucent's 7750 Service Router (SR) and 7450 Ethernet Service Switch products.

It gives service providers with existing Alcatel Lucent routers (models released since 2004) the capacity to migrate up to the 100 Gigabit Ethernet standard from existing investments in 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit kit without service interruption.

As revealed in iTnews last week, Australia's largest carrier Telstra is still migrating from the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard to 40 Gigabit Ethernet in its inter-city links.

It is not expected that many other service providers in Australia are ready to invest in 100 Gigabit Ethernet capabilities.