LTE mobile gateways break 100 Gb/s speeds
MANHASSET, NY — Ixia together with with Alcatel-Lucent announced the results of an LTE Evolved Packet Core (EPC) test that broke the 100 Gb/s barrier for mobile gateways.
Alcatel-Lucent routers were stressed using Ixia's IxLoad application and Acceleron load modules and successfully passed multimedia traffic over simultaneous 80 Gb/s downstream and 20 Gb/s upstream links.

The scenario roughly equated to 1.5 million voice LTE channels or, inversely, more than 65,000 high-definition html-based H.264 video sessions running concurrently at aggregate speeds over 100 Gb/s.

"Ixia had the hardware and software that could accommodate the scalability we needed to validate our product with real world application traffic," said Kevin Macaluso, Vice President and General Manager of the Service Router product group within Alcatel-Lucent, in a statement.

According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), the number of mobile operators committed to deploying LTE advanced mobile broadband systems has more than doubled in the past year.

With 64 operators working to implement LTE in 31 countries, GSA expects that up to 22 networks will be in commercial service by the end of 2010.

The Economist recently predicted that mobile Internet users are expected to surpass fixed Internet users in 2011.

Mobile data traffic in the coming years will reach volumes thousands of times higher than previously seen in wireless networks, imposing significant challenges on both the radio access network (RAN) and EPC in LTE mobile broadband rollouts, according ot Ixia.

"LTE is about massive increase of video and data traffic which demands massive throughput in the Evolved Packet Core," said Victor Alston, Senior Vice President, Product Development at Ixia.
04/22/2010 9:13 AM EDT by EE Times Nicolas Mokhoff