Earlier this month, Juniper Networks and Tellabs each announced that they added "multiservice" functionality to their existing routers, which were originally designed to shuttle traffic across the core of a telecom network. These updated routers can be used at the edge of the network to help carriers transition from circuit-based networks to IP [Internet Protocol] networks.
While retrofitting existing products to attack a fast-growing market may make sense from a business perspective, it's not an easy engineering task, analysts said.
"One could easily make the case that the design for a core router won't work well even if it's repurposed for the edge," said David Passmore, an analyst with the Burton Group. "The most important thing to focus on in the core is packet-forwarding, and at the edge you really need granular packet processing."
Multservice edge products are what make digital convergence in the network happen. These devices aggregate customer traffic, including Frame Relay, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), Ethernet and leased line, and dump it onto a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) backbone. MPLS allows carriers to more efficiently use their network resources, while still offering customers private and secure connections. The market for multservice edge devices is expected to be huge, around $3.3bn (£1.77bn) by 2006, according to Infonetics Research. By contrast, the core router market is expected to be worth about $2.7bn by 2006.
The strong revenue potential may explain why so many companies are going after this market. While the core router market is dominated by two players -- Cisco Systems and Juniper -- the multiservice edge router market has dozens of competitors, including Alcatel, Cisco, Juniper, Laurel Networks, Nortel Networks, Redback Networks and Tellabs.
Last Tuesday, Juniper announced the M320 router, which uses the same chipsets, hardware design and software operating system found in the company's flagship M-series core routers. Juniper, which has been shipping routers since the late 1990s, has already established itself in the core router market. The company originally designed its first product, the M40, to compete with Cisco's core router. Now the company is marketing the entire line of M-series routers as edge routers and selling its newer T-series routers for the core.
