AdvancedTCA User Interview of Jon Lindén, Procera Networks
By Dr. Lance A. Leventhal, ATCA Newsletter

1. Why did you choose AdvancedTCA?
AdvancedTCA is an industry standard with reliable performance. The fact that it’s a standard makes our customers feel comfortable with the selection, and they know better what to expect. The reliability is a key requirement. We sell to broadband service providers, and they expect five 9’s which is what you can achieve with ATCA. Finally, by relying on a constantly evolving standard, we can draw on an entire community’s knowledge, experience, and resources as we develop our next-generation product line.

2. What platform were you using previously and why did you decide to change?
We’ve always relied on commercial off the shelf (OTS) solutions. We’ve gone through several X86 platforms based on both Intel and AMD. They have been good cost-efficient and compact platforms, but as we move up the value-chain – to address new bandwidth requirements as well as the top tier service providers – we needed something more robust, scalable, and expressly built for networking. The x86 products are still part of our portfolio as they, with the same feature-richness, complement the new high-end AdvancedTCA member of our PacketLogic family.

3. Are you using a vendor-supplied platform or developing one in-house? Why did you make this choice? If you are using a vendor-supplied platform, whose is it?
We’re using Continuous Computing’s FlexTCA platform with a systems management blade, a switch blade, and a processing blade that acts as both load balancer and packet processor.

4. Did you face cooling and power distribution problems?
Not so far. We worked closely with Continuous Computing to develop a variety of chassis, cooling, and power options.

5. Have you implemented shelf management? If so, what software did you use?
We simply use the shelf management blade and software provided with the FlexTCA platform. In this case, it is Pigeon Point. The software works well as a stand alone function.

6. How do you interconnect your AdvancedTCA boards?
We use a dual star configuration with two switching blades for a 10Gbps fabric and a 1Gbps base network.

7. How did you debug and test your AdvancedTCA system?
The platform is tested thoroughly by Continuous Computing before it gets to us. We add another layer of burn-in tests for CPUs, memory, storage, and networking components using burn-in software and state of the art packet generators.

8. Did you find any interoperability issues?
No. Continuous Computing does a thorough job in testing the platform before it gets to us.

9. How large is your system and how much throughput does it provide?
We’re offering two options, a 5U chassis and a 12U chassis. A fully loaded 12U chassis delivers 80 Gbps throughput, which is four times the closest deep packet inspection (DPI) solution.

10. Are you using middleware?
No, but the option was available to us with the FlexTCA platform

11. Are you planning to use AdvancedMCs or MicroTCA?
We are already using AMCs for additional network ports on our management blade. When researching future products, we have found many situations where AMCs will play an important role.

12. What is your opinion of AdvancedTCA? Will you use it in other products?
We’re very satisfied with our selection of AdvancedTCA. It has provided us with the performance, capacity, and credibility that we hoped for. Our PacketLogic product line offers a broad functionality. The new AdvancedTCA-based PacketLogic PL10000 is the crown jewel in our current portfolio, and we expect to continue developing with the AdvancedTCA standard.

13. How has AdvancedTCA worked out in terms of effort and return on investment?
The use of a commercial OTS platform and an existing standard has significantly reduced our time to market. This is crucial in a highly competitive landscape like the DPI industry. We’ve probably shortened our time to market by a year to a year and half, and gained that much lead time over the competition.

14. What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to those planning similar projects?
It works as advertised and you definitely get what you pay for.

Jon Lindén is the Vice-President of Product Management and Global Marketing at Procera Networks (Los Gatos, CA). You can reach him at jlinden@proceranetworks.com.