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Broadband is experiencing explosive worldwide subscriber growth, with users across the globe seeking more Internet bandwidth. Broadband is also evolving from a single service—Internet connectivity—to an underlying architecture supporting sophisticated consumer and business services. For network operators to compete, they must deploy solutions that can cost-effectively increase bandwidth-per-subscriber while enabling new services to increase profits.

ECI's ST-series routers are the first broadband platforms architected specifically to deliver high performance across multiple services with many subscribers. The ST-series delivers the most bandwidth-per - subscriber at the lowest cost while enabling dynamic policy-based services without sacrificing performance. And, unlike solutions that require service-specific line cards, ST broadband functionality is enabled via its ShadeTree™ System Software, enabling wire-speed broadband support on any card installed on the ST platform with no additional hardware required.

Advanced Broadband Applications

Unlike earlier B-RAS (Broadband Remote Access Server) platforms
designed to support Internet connectivity only, the ST system
architecture was designed with the performance, high availability
and comprehensive routing support required to deliver any type
of business or consumer service over DSL networks. Only the ST enables service providers to offer any type of revenue-generating broadband value-added service (BVAS) to large numbers of bandwidth-hungry users while reducing cost-per-subscriber. Advanced broadband applications enabled by the ST include:

Business VPN Services: The ST-series B-RAS allows service providersto offer scalable business services including Internet, dynamically routed IP VPNs and virtual private LAN service (VPLS)—all with the bandwidth guarantees, reliability and QoS required to meet tringent business SLAs. With support for 8,000 virtual routers, each with full dynamic routing, the ST enables IP VPN service without limitations.

Internet Access,Transit and Peering: The ST platform
incorporates a complete and robust implementation of Internet
routing protocols. With full routing, the ST can simultaneously
manage sessions, perform backbone routing and dynamic business or wholesale VPN routing. For ISPs, this means the B-RAS platform can make intelligent routing decisions to direct traffic tolow-cost BGP peering links instead of costly transit links.

Video and Audio Transport: With its combination of performance,
per-subscriber QoS and integrated policy management, the ST
can deliver video on demand (VoD) or video conferencing services.
The ST also supports IP multicast routing and forwarding to
enable wire-speed broadcast video or audio distribution. The ST can be used to overcome the lack of multicast support in DSLAMs by replicating multicast streams of up to 64,000 subscribers.

Collapsed Backbone Switching: In addition to performing
session management, the ST is capable of natively switching
ATM circuits or Ethernet VLANs. Integrated switching enables a
number of cost-saving applications including native ATM or Ethernet aggregation and services, ATM or Ethernet switch interconnect, transparent LAN interconnect for VoIP gateways and controllers or voice trunk switching using Circuit Emulation Services (CES).

ST-series Broadband Feature Highlights

Industry-leading Performance
- Upto 100,000 active LAC or LNS sessions
- Upto 8,000 virtual routers (VRFs) with dynamic routing (OSPF, BGP or RIP)
- Upto 80 Gbps full-duplex throughput (not limited by special-purpose service modules or centralized routing engines)

Policy Management
- Dynamic per-session QoS
- Hierarchical scheduling

Full AAA Support
- PAP/CHAP
- RADIUS or local accounting
- DHCP Option 82

IP Multicast for Audio or Video Broadcast
- Up to 64,000 members per IP multicast group
- PIM sparse mode
- MBGP
- IGMPv2/3

Highly Reliable
- Distributed, redundant hardware
- Hitless software upgrades
- Non-stop forwarding
- Modular Shade Tree System Software

Comprehensive Routing
- BGP-4
- IS-IS-TE, OSPFv2, RIPvI, RIPv2
- LDP, RSVP-TE
- MPLS IP VPNs

Integrated Layer 2 Switching
- ATM VP or VC switching
- Ethernet switching
- ATM, Frame Relay and Ethernet over MPLS