Atlanta - Just because Avici Systems Inc. will show off a new line card at Supercomm 2003 here this week based on Intel Corp.'s IXP2400 network processors, that doesn't mean the company's original core router architecture has changed.

Avici will use Intel's IXP in the new generation of eight- and 16-port MultiService Connect line cards, which allow a variety of frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode, and voice-over-IP traffic types to be inputted and routed in Avici routers.

While Avici has used the "Any Service Any Port" slogan since it introduced the Tera Switch Router in 1999, marketing director Esmeralda Swartz said that the new MultiService Connect line cards provide a degree of granularity and flexibility in port assignment that Avici had not offered before. The company's first generation of line card required a dedicated card for each traffic type, while the new cards can mix different IP and terminated ATM traffic.

The original TSR had used a variety of ASICs bearing orchestral names-Maestro, Cello, Fife, Snare-to handle all aspects of packet forwarding and interconnect. Most such ASICs in the control plane will remain, and only those related to the first generation of I/O will be replaced by the IXP2400.

Swartz said that handling ATM is particularly important for incumbent local and long-haul carriers with large Internet peering centers. Avici opted for more flexibility when it chopped its TSR chassis in half, yielding the Stackable Switch Router in late 2001, and then halved it again a year later with the Quarter Switch Router, which shipped at the end of 2002. The SSR and QSR are not junior routers intended as edge-routing switches, Swartz said, but fully functional systems sharing the same backplane performance as the TSR.

Hence, the MultiService Connect line cards can fit into any of the three router platforms, allowing the router systems to be scaled at will. Initial versions of the new cards are an eight-port card supporting channelized OC-12 and STM-4; a 16-port card for channelized OC-3 and STM-1; and a hybrid card for four ports of OC-12 and eight ports of OC-3. Avici is working with Intel to develop further line cards for OC-48 and OC-192 port speeds.

Avici already had been attracting traditional carriers with its non-stop routing features introduced at the end of last year, for high-availability telco-like features. The MultiService Connect line card will further aid Avici's case in the traditional telecom carrier market, Swartz said, since ATM and circuit-emulated functions can be handled in a flexible manner.

"The Intel work really completed our puzzle in the sense that Any Service Any Port really means what it says," she said.

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