BT 21CN
The 21st Century Network (21CN) programme is the data and voice network transformation project, under way since 2004, of the UK telecommunications company BT Group plc. It was intended to move BT's telephone network from the AXE/System X Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) system. As well as switching over the PSTN, BT planned to deliver many additional services over their new data network, such as on-demand interactive TV services. BT originally stated that it would accrue annual savings of £1 billion when the transition to the new network was completed, and hoped to have over 50% of its customers transferred by 2008 (see External links below for current progress on the roll-out of optical fibre by Openreach). Capital expenditure was put at £10 billion over five years, this being 75% of BT's total capital spending plans in that period. Architecture The new network is based on an architectural model of five classes of network nodes. These are: Premises Access (MSAN) Metro Core iNode Premises Premises nodes includes residential, small-medium enterprise (SME) and enterprise. The presumption is that all these will have high speed connections to the network, delivered over copper (in the form of ADSL or other DSL technologies) or over fibre, as either PON or direct fibre in the case of large enterprises. The sole exception to this presumption is for legacy PSTN, where provision will continue to be made for analogue voice. Access node 21CN introduced the concept of the multi-service access node (MSAN). This logical node takes the various access technologies (mentioned above) and, where possible, aggregates these onto a single backhaul network technology. This includes converting analogue voice into voice over IP (VoIP) using the MSAN as a media gateway (MGW). The aim is to implement a few hundred access nodes. Note that these will not have any IP routing capability, but will essentially be layer 2 Ethernet devices. Metro node The backhaul network will terminate on the metro nodes. At this point the IP-based services will be implemented, and the metro nodes are the first location where IP traffic is routed. Call control (via a softswitch or an IMS CSCF) will be implemented here, although the softswitches and the IMS components won't be described as a part of the metro node – they are parts of the iNode. The metro nodes are also provider edge (PE) routers in MPLS terminology, encapsulating the IP traffic in MPLS tunnels for transmission over the core. The aim is to implement around 100 metro nodes. Core node The core nodes are MPLS switches, with the MPLS traffic carried over optical (DWDM) transport. They are completely unaware of customer IP traffic, and only switch based on MPLS tags (all customer IP traffic is encapsulated with an MPLS header by the metro node PEs). Native IP is only used by the core nodes for protocols such as MP-BGP, an IGP, LDP, and RSVP to exchange routing and label information between all core and metro nodes. The