Last week, Net.com revealed details about its two new IP service creation platforms, the Scream100 and Scream50. The products are follow-ons to its Scream200 device, which is a pure ATM play. They will be launched at SuperComm 2001 in Atlanta in June and will ship in July, the company says.
The new platform, which supposedly gives carriers a way to create and provision IP, ATM, and SONET-based services, has no shortage of company. In fact, Net.com is headed, screaming, into a Mongol hoard of competitors that include incumbents like Lucent and Nortel, as well as smaller start-ups such as Quarry Technologies, Ellacoya Networks and Celox Networks. So what sets Scream apart from its competitors?
Compared to existing products, Net.com has a clear technology edge, says Ron Westfall, an analyst with Current Analysis.
"There is an obvious difference in scalability and switching capacity versus market leaders like CoSine, Shasta, and Springtide," he says.
The Scream100 can support up to 256,000 user sessions and 40G bit/sec of capacity. Its smaller counterpart, the Scream 50, is a scaled-down version aimed at smaller service providers. It can handle about 64,000 subscribers and has about 5G bit/sec worth of capacity, the vendor says. This compares to the Nortel Shasta 5000 product, which supports 32,000 subscribers with 10G bit/sec of switching capacity; Lucent's Springtide box that supports 64,000 subscribers and 10G bit/sec; and Cosine's product, which supports 100,000 subscribers and 22G bit/sec of capacity.
When compared to next-generation kits from startups like Quarry and Celox, however, Net.com's numbers don't look nearly as impressive. Celox, for instance, claims to handle up to 6 million subscribers, and says it has about 80G bit/sec of capacity.
Net.com says that its "split plane" architecture should help it stand up against these new heavy-hitters. Its device architecture is physically and logically split into two distinct pieces: the control plane and the data plane. The control plane, which handles the logic of the system, runs on a Sun Solaris server. The data plane, which takes care of packet and cell processing, is a network card that slips into the box. This separation makes it easier for carriers to integrate the box into existing operational support systems (OSS), Net.com claims.
To further smooth the integration path, Scream also uses a free, open API that lets carriers write applications that can link the platform to directories or billing services without having to license the API from Net.com.
Other differentiators are more mundane. Unlike current generations of products, the depth of the Net.com box is 11 inches, which means it should fit easily into a standard New Equipment Building System-compliant rack.
"A lot of these boxes stick out of the rack," says Westfall. "I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but rack space is expensive and it's limited. Carriers really care about this kind of thing."
The Scream box also consumes less power than its competitors, which saves carriers big bucks on operational costs. One reason for this is its new processor from Agere Systems. For example, a fully loaded Nortel/Shasta configuration uses 96 Power PC chips at a power output of about 1500 Watts. The Scream500 uses four Agere chipsets and four of its own ASICs for ATM processing using only 900 Watts of power.
Net.com has a longer history in business than outfits like Quarry, Ellacoya or Celox. It's been around since the 1980s developing ATM gear - experience that should go over well with established carriers.
"I don't see much of a fundamental difference in technology among all the next-generation players, but I'm more optimistic about Net.com's chances because of the corporate resources they have to draw on," comments Westfall.
Marguerite Reardon is a senior editor at Light Reading, (http://www.lightreading.com), an optical networking Web site. She can be reached at reardon@lightreading.com
