Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, HP and Spirent team up at Interop 2013 to present what they say is the first, live multi-vendor interoperability test using Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) technology. 

The test leverages the InteropNet backbone network to connect equipment at each participant's booths-- namely an Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6900 LAN switch, Avaya Virtual Services Platform 9000, HP 12500 series switches and Spirent TestCentre. 

SPB is an open and extensible fabric networking technology. Standardised as either 802.1aq (IEEE) or RFC 6329 (IETF), the technology simplifies network creation and management by demanding service provisioning only in the edge of the network. Using the Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) protocol, SPB dynamically builds and maintains network topology between nodes and establishes a multi-path  traffic distribution fabric. 

"Four vendors coming together to showcase SPB interoperability in a public forum such as Interop is significant," ZK Research says. "In comparison to alternative fabric technologies, SPB offers more vendor support, greater scaling and implementations closer to the actual standards-- facilitating this type of interoperability testing.  Companies looking to virtualise data centers and reduce network complexity need to consider an approach based on SPB."

Go Networking Industry Leaders to Showcase SPB Interoperabilty at Interop 2013