To make this happen, the system comes equipped with redundant power supplies as well as 1:1 or 1:N sparing on the hardware front. On the software front, the system delivers non-stop routing, graceful restart, and Sonet protection capabilities. Additionally, the system is developed around a carrier-grade Linux operating system.
The high-availability capabilities allow carriers to make some interesting moves at the services level. According to David Hudson, Nortel's vice president of data product strategy, the HA capabilities of the MPS 9000 family allow carriers to isolate services, to individually memory protect a service, and to individually replace software modules without taking the system offline.
Battling Cisco
While Nortel is hyped about its new MPS 9000 family, the company also knows that to win, they'll have to take Cisco head on. "Cisco absolutely has the share in the space," Spradley said.
To take Cisco on, Spradley pointed to the carrier-grade nature of the MPS 9000 family saying that this family has been crafted from the start for carrier deployments. "We were careful not to take an enterprise box and make it a carrier box," Spradley said. "We started with a carrier-grade box that can be scaled down," she added.
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