Aggregation – Routing Software

Your choice of open switch hardware
Automate with Open APIs
Cost-effective
High performance
Scale up - or scale down

Over recent years, ‘cloud-native’ service providers have developed ways to build and run massive data centers with a high degree of automation, to reduce operational overheads and deliver levels of service agility beyond traditional carrier infrastructure.

RtBrick’s open BNG brings these same benefits to carrier access networks, by disaggregating software from hardware and applying the same battle-hardened DevOps cloud automation tools that have been adopted by the world’s biggest cloud providers.

The RtBrick Aggregation Router is delivered as a software container, running on the Open Network Linux (ONL) provided by the hardware manufacturers, which handles peripherals such as LEDs, temperature sensors, and so on.

The RtBrick routing software runs on low-cost but powerful open switches with low power consumption. It can easily scale down as well as up, by selecting the best open switch for your use-case.

RtBrick’s open BNG software delivers some significant benefits compared to traditional monolithic systems:

Greater Agility

Pick your optimum hardware to deliver the same services from small temperature hardened switches or from large multi-terabit-per-second devices.

Reduced risk

No more vendor lock-in or monopolistic supply constraints. Repurpose hardware when it's no longer needed. And benefit from the world’s fastest routing convergence times

Lower cost-levels

RtBrick's software runs on powerful but low-cost open switches, with lower power consumed per gigabit than traditional routers.

Deployment at Smaller Scale

For small to medium deployments, and a highly distributed architecture, all BNG functionality can be operated on a single low-cost open switch, which can also operate as a Multiservice Edge Router. The software image running on the single switch includes all of the service-facing features and the core routing features in the same platform. It is very economical where there are lower concentrations of subscribers and can also run on smaller form-factor hardware, that is hardened for deployments in cabinets or cell-sites.

The ability to highly distribute the BNG deeper into the network also enables services to be terminated closer to compute and storage that is located closer to consumers.

Deployment at Large Scale

Aggregation capacity can also be provided in a scale-out architecture called the Point-Of-Deployment (PoD), also known as a SEBA PoD (SDN Enabled PoD). A large-scale PoD consists of Access Leaf Routers aggregated by a layer of Spine Leaf Routers in an auto-provisioned CLOS topology. The Access Leaves deliver subscriber management functionality. For even greater scalability a layer of Border Leaves can be added to provide more connectivity to the core of the provider network.

The leaves can be scaled out horizontally to increase the number of subscribers supported on the PoD, providing a pay-as-you-grow architecture. PPPoE Subscribers can be terminated on the Access Leaf Routers or tunneled to an LNS over L2TPv2. L2 Cross Connect (L2X) allows subscriber traffic to be tunnelled out of the PoD at Layer 2, providing wholesale connectivity.