AT&T announced that it is releasing thia week the 'white-box' blueprint for cell site gateway router to the Open Compute Project.
Hardware makers can use the specs as reference design to build these open platform routers for backhaul transport. AT&T plans to install them at tens of thousands of cell towers over the next several years.
The high-performance and versatile cell site gateway router an open hardware specification that can be coupled with a separate, disaggregated software solution. It decouples hardware from software, so providers have freedom to choose software implementations that best support their business and operational models.
It is designed to support a wide range of speeds on the client side including 100M/1G needed for legacy Baseband Unit systems and next generation 5G Baseband Unit systems operating at 10G/25G and backhaul speeds up to 100G. Its features include; - It features the Broadcom Qumran-AX switching chip with deep buffers to support advanced features and QOS. - It includes a baseboard management controller (BMC) for platform health status monitoring and recovery. - It includes a powerful CPU for network operating software. - It has timing circuitry that supports a variety of inputs and outputs to meet the evolving timing requirements and implementations in the 5G technology evolution.
AT&T has been working with several original design manufacturers (ODMs) throughout the requirements development process. It is also developing its own network operating system software to control and manage the white box hardware.
The AT&T software solution is based on the technology acquired through the Vyatta acquisition in mid-2017.
Chris Rice, SVP, Network Cloud and Infrastructure, AT&T
Data traffic on our wireless network has grown 360,000% since 2007. We now carry more than 222 petabytes of data on an average business day. The old hardware model simply can’t keep up, and we need to get faster and more efficient.
Ken Duell, Assistant VP of Packet Edge Development, AT&T Labs
We’re on track to meet the commitment made earlier this year to begin First Field Applications (FFA) this calendar year and in time refreshing our entire base of over 60,000 cell site routers to this new white box implementation.
