Arrcus Announces 11th Patent in Networking and VDR Trial with Liberty Global

News Summary

• Announces the issuance of 11th U.S. patent in networking, 4th in the area of Virtualized Distributed Routing (VDR)
• Announces trial of VDR with Liberty Global

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Arrcus, the hyperscale networking software company and a leader in core-to-edge infrastructure, today announced the issuance of its latest patent in support of its VDR (Virtualized Distributed Routing) solution. Arrcus VDR built on its ACE platform is in trials with communications service providers including Liberty Global. With Arrcus VDR, customers can deploy an innovative, open, resilient routing infrastructure that addresses all the issues of a traditional chassis while delivering secure distributed connectivity and maximum deployment flexibility at the lowest total cost of ownership.

VDR transforms the monolithic router chassis into a distributed system that can scale to thousands of 100G and 400G ports, allowing service providers to address the disruptive growth in bandwidth without having to worry about limited or underutilized slots in a chassis. VDR offers truly incremental growth with its elastic build-as-you-grow model, where an operator can grow the fabric seamlessly based on business needs without any operational complexity. This provides a foundation for the service providers to build an open and profitable network.

The Arrcus VDR solution, built on its ACE platform, is powered by ArcOS, the proven, flexible, microservices-based network operating system built from first principles and leverages its industry-leading route scale and convergence times. The VDR architecture, built to support multiple generations and types of silicon, currently supports Broadcom’s high-speed, high-density Jericho2- (line card: 40x100G + 13x400G), Jericho2C+- (line card: 36x400G + 40x400G), and Ramon-based (fabric: 24x400G or 48x400G) platforms from multiple ODM vendors. The solution is designed with cloud-native principles and runs networking services (e.g., L2VPN, L3VPN, EVPN, SR-MPLS, SRv6, etc.) in independent containers, allowing them to scale horizontally. In addition, the cloud-ready, deep-visibility, and analytics component of ACE, ArcIQ is integrated with the VDR system, providing real-time visibility into each node, monitoring network health, and offering a single plane of glass view in terms of configuration and debuggability.

The latest patent is the 11^th overall awarded to Arrcus, and the 4^th focused on virtualized distributed routing. This invention addresses the punt path between the control plane and line card and creating a virtual VLAN tag for each front panel interface. Previous patents awarded to Arrcus in VDR cover topics such as router state database for distributing routes to line cards, handling punt path using VXLAN, and using BGP-SPF as an underlay instead of cell-based fabric.

Arrcus is also actively working on a VDR trial with Liberty Global (LG) to build its Provider Edge (PE) router functionality. VDR addresses the operational complexities of traditional chassis-based systems by being able to scale as a single node as LG’s capacity requirements grow. By running the highly available and resilient control plane on an independent compute cluster, VDR’s novel distributed architecture takes advantage of multiple server cores to unleash massive performance at scale while de-coupling network services from physical chassis constraints.

“As we build our next-generation networks, we are exploring flexible, distributed routing architectures that allow us to scale easily and bring solutions to our customers faster,” said Adrian Drury, managing director, technology strategy at Liberty Global. “Arrcus VDR offers an alternative to traditional chassis-based systems and promises to give us a new lever to manage our scale within line with capacity requirements and our cost objectives.”

Key differentiating aspects of the VDR solution, a high-port density, modular routing system, include:

• Massive scale beyond the physical constraints of a chassis
• Architectural flexibility to run on any hardware platform and silicon
• Efficient resource utilization and lower cost per port
• Operational simplicity with a single logical management and control plane
• High availability from both a hardware (built-in fabric redundancy) and a software (graceful process restart) standpoint
• Flexible consumption model that allows users to start small and add capacity as network demand grows
• Rapid service innovation, enabling new revenue streams
• In-depth health monitoring, fabric-wide operational insights and analytics

“At Arrcus, we have built a platform that is designed to address modularity, programmability and adapt to the dynamically scaling requirements of next-generation networks,” said Shekar Ayyar, CEO and chairman at Arrcus. “I am pleased to see our innovation in the area of VDR support requirements of global communications service providers such as Liberty Global.”

“Arrcus is at the forefront of driving high-performance networking in a scalable and cost-effective manner with its VDR solution,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, core switching group, Broadcom. “We are pleased to see Arrcus’ ACE platform leveraging the capabilities of Broadcom silicon to address critical service provider customer needs to make their infrastructure more dynamic and flexible.”

Additional Resources

• Arrcus VDR
• Arrcus Network Evolution Webinar
• Arrcus videos and podcasts
• Arrcus website

About Arrcus

Arrcus was founded to enhance business efficiency through superior network connectivity. The Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform offers best-in-class networking with the most flexible consumption model at the lowest total cost of ownership. The Arrcus team consists of world-class technologists who have an unparalleled record in shipping industry-leading networking products, complemented by industry thought leaders, operating executives, strategic partners, and top-tier VCs. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, go to www.arrcus.com or follow @arrcusinc.