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Hardware

Terabit Routers 59

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-bits-please dept.
Rocket Boy writes "I was perusing the news and came across this sucker. The specs on the thing look outrageous. Heck, the whole thing looks outrageous. 2.5-5.6TB/S speed, Supports 2240 OC-48 or 560 OC-192 connections. " You can download a lot of po.. I mean play a lotta qua... I mean read a lot of slas... I mean.. work. You could do a lot of work with that.
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Terabit Routers More

Terabit Routers

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  • Re:Here's an idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Using speeds like this for anything but backbone work is not too good an idea. System busses and CPUs on *normal* computers cannot handle the data flow. However, normal computers *can* handle OC-3, which is what Marina [cwru.edu] uses. :)

  • In Beta now! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's actually 4 terabit startups:

    Avici - Has several betas ongoing. I know the product works, cause I work at Avici.
    Nexabit - Close to releasing product, but it uses a crossbar arch., not as scaleable as ours.
    Pluris - Claims similar to ours, though they haven't shown anything.
    Juniper - Has a gigabit router now, working with Crisco to get a terbit unit.

    You should check them all out. But we do have units working, and we have played a few mean games of Half Life on these beasts. But to be sure, these are the units that will be placed in phone and cable POPs to increase bandwidth on the Internet backbone. At a cool 1 million clams a piece, I wouldn't go yanking up CAT5 just yet.

  • So pointless... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who cares how fast routers if:
    (a) not everyone is using them [the 'net is only as fast as it's slowest link]
    (b) it's all gotta squeeze through your modem at the end of the line.

    We need a massively ambitious program (like the interstate highway program) to get high speed data access to every home in the nation. Damn the costs, the new 'net will generate new revenue to cover the costs down the road.

  • Terabits: Possible but Not Practical (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The site said that the routers were scalable to terabit speeds, but that doesn't mean that a terabit router has ever been built. It would be possible to put to take a couple million CPUS and build a petaflop supercomputer, but no one could possible afford that (at least not yet).

  • It is interesting to note that the interstate highway system was also built as a backup runway system for the US military.

    Evidence: interstate highways, especially the early ones, are mainly straight with few turns, have trees far back from the side of the road to accomodate wide airplane wings, are divided to provide a parallel road for military traffic, have controled access and are thus easy to close off.

  • Posted by Mister_BFR:

    The Nexabit team, somehow, has managed to make a
    name for themselves as hypemasters. They have
    squeeged out press releases that make outrageous claims. They even went so far as to make a press
    announcement using Frontier Networks name without first getting their permission. There are obvious legal problems with doing so, but even more so, they don't even have a working module in the lab at Frontier. I've talked to them all, and the only company I know of - to date - that has a working architecture, in fact, a kick ass architecture is
    Avici. They based their architecture on supercomputers and they stuff up to 560 modules in a single monolithic architecture that scales. They did it right. First they built hardware that performs and scales, then they built software on top of it that rocks... if you saw their operating system CLI, you'd really like it. SO, in this crazy field, I can promise you that these guys are
    REAL and it WORKS.
  • Posted by Mister_BFR:

    Avici has done it. Unlike their competitors, the way you calculate total bandwith with Avici is simple. Mutliply the # of interfaces, by the bandwidth speed and you got it. It's that simple. Every port is wire speed whether you are running at OC3 or OC48. Unlike NExabit (the breakfast cereal), who calculates the bandwidth off of some derivative of backplane specification Avici over-engineered their box to be NON-BLOCKING through the use of virtual channels and dedicated buffering. And, by the way, Avici is NOT the only company that said that they to scale the system to terabits that you need to add more frames... in fact, SHOW ME ONE VENDOR WHO can scale to 5.6 terabits in a single frame - jeez.. no one can, it's physically impossible today based on today's electronics... and even if they could, it would have to be a water cooled unit to handle the heat. As for your comment on off-bus memory access - it shows that you have not had a single technical presentation on the product. If you are truly interested, i suggest you contact Avici and arrange it BEFORE you pontificate about an architecture you clearly know very little about.
    And besides, the Avici story works.... I've seen it. Avici is a name you will be hearing about for a long time to come.

  • Maybe we should wait until the current boom is over and we start sinking into recession. Something like this could create a lot of jobs and involve a lot of government spending, which is what is needed to end a recession. Then we may just start another long boom.

  • Say, suppose some webserver were connected to obscenely gross bandwidth: how long would it take us to /. it? (assume that we have an infinite amount of /.'ing resources).
  • Actually, I doubt that. Scalability is not always linear.... I highly doubt the scalability technology currently exists to acheive that high speeds with any amount of processors (Yes, at a certain point adding processors can SLOW things with lock contention etc..)
  • In Korea, some highways are closed once a year for landing practice. They're similar to US interstates, but they have movable median dividers.

    I don't think the US system is much use as a landing zone. Landing is easy - it's finding gas, ammunition, and rental cars that's difficult.

  • A bit faster than "a few years", and Internet backbones get them first - cellphone networks actually have fairly low traffic flows.

    You'd want a cluster of routers of that capacity at each physical POP that's connected by high-capacity fiber. Those will connect to metropolitan-area rings, and those to businesses and ISPs.

    See the BBN^H^H^HGTE Internetworking fiber map [bbn.com].
  • Thanks for spreading misinformation. FDR was dead when people started coming back from the war. DDE was the one who started the interstate highway program, and he started it as a crucial part of the post-war defense infrastructure.

    -jwb

  • Kremvax was named by Piet Beertema long before any russians joined usenet/internet.

    http://www.lysator.liu.se/hackdict/split/kremvax .html

    HTH

    Tob
  • People like Gates could afford it, but no matter how rich you are, there's a point where the incremential benefit (a cost measured in dollars, but kind of an estimate) of adding another CPU outweighs the incremential cost of adding that CPU.

  • The hardware isn't the only problem. We're using 2 Cisco 4700 in our university backbone and our traffic to the outer world increased a lot (2.5 times more than 2 weeks ago because of a better connection) and so did our internal traffic. What happened ? Our network crashed every other day, no clue where the problem was (we suspected hardware failures). No we found the solution: a software bug in the cisco's (they're running at about 60% the speed they claim they could handle...).
    So, tech-specs are good, but you have to test them in a real world enviroment (ok, we're only a university ;-) )
  • OC-48 and OC-192 sounds nice, but I'd be happy, if
    OC-3 Modules for the Cabletron SSR-8000 are available 8-(
  • Brief history:

    The interstate highway program was startred to revitilise the US economy under FDR. It was a form of government subsidised "busy-work," to get people back from the war into the workforce again. Same with the Hoover Dam.

    This ("...massively ambitios program...") would truly be fantastic, as my girl-friend and I are both EAGERLY waiting the day cable-modem access comes to our neighboorhood. Something like this would do the trick, offer jobs now, and a fair surity of jobs in the years to come.

    I'm all for it!
  • Just for the record, I used 9600 :o)
    ---
  • How 'bout one of those dummies book..
    Beuwolf Building for Dummies.
    "Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
  • There are many more differences between OC-3 and OC-192. It is true that 192 can be broken down into OC-3 (and OC-12/OC-48) streams, but it's not done by sticking OC-3 streams out on different wavelengths.

    The internal design of the SDH/STM networks is pretty interesting, but as always the problem is at the switches. The major problem with gigabit+ routers is always getting stuff from one port to another. The subsiduary problem is what to do if all the incoming traffic needs to go out one port.

    Ah, the joys of router design. I do miss it sometimes :-)
  • Life would be a lot better in the USA if the guys at MaeWest decided to implement one of these suckers there. That one point causes a massive amount of net traffic in this nation.

    RB
  • Taking this to the logical extreme, we ought to have one of these in each home around..

    break out the envelope:

    assume 56k now, doubling every, what 1.5 years? that would 1tb in about 15 iterations, 15*1.5 = 22.5 years. I can wait for that.
  • West vs. East
    You west-siders max at our sunday levels...

    http://www.mfsdatanet.com/MAE/ east.aggr.overlay.html [mfsdatanet.com]


    http://www.mfsdatanet.com/MAE/ west.aggr.overlay.html [mfsdatanet.com]

    MAE-EAST definitely deserves this monster first




    Aaron Prosser
  • If it were a FreeBSD or BSDI[*] box connected to one of those, never.

    [*] Probably NetBSD and OpenBSD, too, but I've never had experience there.
  • I see it a lot. Everybody is saying that a PC is the solution for everything. Need a high-end web server? Use a bunch of PCs! Need a router? A PC will do your job!

    I disagree with this. Perhaps another type of system, but PCs are probably the worst and most inefficient architecture, mostly because they remain to be the only existing CISC architecture today, whereas everybody else is using a RISC processor.

    I also would bet that all the PCs you need to equate to the product mentioned above would cost way more, and would take much more time to maintain.

    On the issue of scaling in particular, I think this product was made with that bandwidth in mind, if not, what's the real use in marketing it as such?

  • Not really (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Great, bring up the chicken or the egg whydontcha.
    Don't forget you've got 100's/1000's/etc... of people on the end of a line using that bandwidth, not just one squeezing at it.

    Take the /. effect. I highly doubt that most /.'ers are on a dedicated T1 to the net but on a 28.8k+ to WaveModem & we still manage to bring down servers that are on dedicated T1/3's, etc...

    If they terebyte xfer ability was there we'd upgrade dontcha think? Mbit ability has been available on the net for years & we're finally catching up to it. (2400, then 14400 (no one used 9600) then 28.8, 33.6, ISDN/ADSL or 56k OR WaveModem, and we're still not as fast as what the hubs & routers are talking to each other at AND we still think its slow.

    We have the reverse situation at my company. We have 10/100's in everyone's PC but the routers & hubs are only 10's. What a pain! There's only 250 PC's systems to connect...they should get with it.

    Anyway, up here in Canada Shaw has been VERY ambitious about wiring us up with the Wave & the ISP's are advertising *DSL lines. I don't know of an area in Calgary that doesn't have the wave. Maybe you need to move?

    --Clay
  • How to build yourself a high-speed mobile network, in three easy steps:
    Step 1. Inflate two quantum-scale wormholes, by rotating a mass at relativistic velocities.
    Step 2. Thread your high-speed optic fibre link through the wormholes. A few cm's should be enough.
    Step 3. Plug the optic fibre into your high-speed router, at either end.
  • Uh... I had thought that the interstate highway system was created during the Eisenhower presidency. It's a military road system, although used much more heavily by the civilian populace (built by state/local governments with federal funding)

    The purpose for the system, of course, is to be able to move troops and war material across the country fast. The state of the nation's highways prior to the interstate system was awful (MA residents - remember how Rte. 9 was once the Mass. Pike? Like that)

    This is a _lot_ like the Internet, which began as a military project but is pretty damn useful in the civilian world.

    BTW - Although the Hoover Dam was built in the depression, I don't think that it actually was one of FDR's make-work projects. FDR was trying to revitalize the economy after the Great Depression, and died in '44 as World War II began to wrap up. Truman was president until '53, and he had to deal with switching over from a war economy to the post war economy. Busy work was not a part of that really; retooling for civilian goods was. He did have a lot of work anyhow - the unions kept giving him fits.

  • So anyway.... The only difference between OC-3 and OC-192 is the number of seperate light frequencies that are sent across the line. Fact is that most fiberoptics can handle a considerably larger number of light frequencies than is currently being done. The only problem is developing a switch/hub/router which can decypher all of these seperate frequencies. It's not all that hard, but it's damned expensive. There's no point in teaming together 2000 OC-192's when you can just create better technology which will be just as fast... and probably end up costing less, and be a bit more reliable. I can't image how much CPU time it would take to route 2000 different connections... that's mad.
  • Looks like the Dense Wave Division Multiplexing technology is going to take over in a few years. I bet you'll see this technology appearing in digital cellphone networks, followed shortly by inclusion into the Internet backbones.

    A couple of these routers stationed across the world should handle an enormous amount of bandwidth.

    If you take a look at the whitepaper, you'll see that they're partnered with Nortel-- one of the leading telecommunications companies.

    What an amazing product.
  • If you are looking for some other bad boys there are plenty of other startups that are doing the same thing. As I recall, Nexabit plans on having a set of boxes that you can link together and route up to 64 OC-192c streams. It might be more. Check these places out:

    http://www.nexabit.com/
    http://www.argon.com/
    http://www.ironbridgenetworks.com/

    I'm sure there are others I'm missing.




    nick
  • This box is not revolutionary. Current switch fabrics already are set to do OC192, and vendors are shipping boxes with 10-12 slots. Avici is just building a full-height-rack monster with 40 slots. Notice that to get the full speed they state, you have to install a bestiary of 14 full racks. All slots, and the switch fabric per-port speed will still be OC192. Their claim to be able to extend the switch fabric to inter-node connections is dubious. There is no way off-bus memory accesses will happen without significant latency.

    As for their hype about Packet-Over-Wavelength, any box that can do OC192 *does* this, as OC192 is the input to a DWDM Transponder.

  • Not news (Score:3)

    by apilosov ( 1810 ) on Thursday May 13, 1999 @09:42AM (#1893653) Homepage
    Pluris was doing it (or claimed to) since '97. They used hypercube for internal switching fabric configuration, and I believe used wireless very-short-distance (1m) links to reduce amount of wiring. Vadim Antonov was the brains behind it, he left the company in '98. Pluris didn't release anything, and their website (www.pluris.com) seems down. Vadim also is person who named major russian UUCP host as 'kremvax', developed/ported unix for soviet PDP-11 clone (called DEMOS), founded first russian ISP (also called DEMOS), architected much of SprintLink, etc.

    Avici on other hand doesn't really say much about how their fabric is done, but I imagine it won't be crossconnect (2000x2000 wires...ugh). Probably some sort of hypercube or selective mesh. I wish Avici was as forthcoming with technical details as Pluris. :)

  • Saying something is "scalable to X terabits" doesn't mean much unless you specify what an "X-terabit router" really has to do. A big $#@! pile of PCs is "scalable to X terabits" if they're all handling totally independent traffic flows and never have to talk to one another, for example. Probably the most useful measure is "cross-sectional bandwidth" (i.e. the amount of bandwidth you'd have to remove to partition the nodes into two or more isolated subsets) as used for measuring intramachine interconnects, but - alas - Avici doesn't give us that information.

    There's also this little issue of balance. Nothing scales perfectly, and often you don't know where the bottleneck will be until you build one. Sure, if you add up all the links maybe you get up to X terabits, but maybe node-internal contention for some resource limits you to X/100. Of course, this never stopped marketing types from acting as though their machine/link/router would be the first in the history of computing to scale perfectly.

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