The selection of routing equipment will be a major part of the design process for SuperJANET5. The new “Carrier Grade” routers will have to provide very high levels of reliability, coupled with an ability to support a large number of connections at or above 10 Gbit/s and remain in the vanguard of new protocol and service developments.
To better understand this new breed of routers, JANET(UK) made an informal investigation into the IP router market and a number of meetings were held with suppliers. Useful information was obtained about the facilities supported and the availability of such routers for deployment in production.
Following this review of the market, JANET(UK) produced a SuperJANET
5 Router Procurement Strategy. This strategy outlined the need to
carry out hands on testing of these routers. So in January 2004 JANET(UK)
issued a Request For Information (RFI) on IP routing equipment that
might be suitable for deployment on the SuperJANET 5 backbone. The purpose
of the RFI was to examine the feasibility of deploying these systems
in operational service.
A copy of this RFI is available as a Microsoft
Word or Adobe
PDF . As a result of this RFI three routers were selected. These
particular routers were chosen because they offer a broad range of new
features that we believe will be useful to deploy in SuperJANET5 and
that these features are currently available to be tested. The routers
chosen are:
A router from Procket was also selected for evaluation but has been
withdrawn following the acquisition of Procket by Cisco.
Results from the testing will be used in the drafting of an ITT to be issued as part of a formal procurement in 2005. Further details of the test schedule are available.
