Chiaro Networks, developer of true infrastructure-class IP/MPLS routing platforms, is spotlighting the industry-leading real-world high availability (HA) of its Enstara IP/MPLS core router platform at the MPLS 2005 International Conference's 6th Public Interoperability Demonstration, being held at the Isocore Internetworking Lab in Reston, Va., on October 20. The Enstara platform is the only core router on the market today that offers comprehensive protection of a carrier's core IP and MPLS traffic required for emerging services such as IPTV, VOIP and VPNs. At the Interoperability Demonstration, the Enstara platform will be featured in the core of the IP/MPLS demonstrations. Next-generation services (IPTV, VOIP and L3/L2-VPN) will be demonstrated over an IP/MPLS core supporting high-availability technologies with real-time QoS support. All of the services and protocols run the Enstara platform's patented STateful Assured Routing (STAR), providing stateful protocol failovers of the core while maintaining all protocols and not interrupting data forwarding. The Enstara platform is the only router that has comprehensive stateful protection of all the IP routing and MPLS signaling protocols (i.e., BGP, OSPF, ISIS, RSVP and LDP). In addition, the Enstara platform is configured to function as a VPN route reflector for IPv4, IPv6 and Layer 3 VPN. Chiaro is a platinum sponsor of the MPLS 2005 International Conference in Washington, D.C., which is being held prior to the Interop Demonstration, on October 16 through 19. MPLS 2005 is the 8th annual International Conference on Multi Protocol Label Switching and related technologies. Since its inception, the conference has become the premier event on the subject of MPLS, Generalized MPLS (GMPLS), IP-Optical and emerging Internet technologies. Chiaro will provide details of the Enstara platform, as well as its high-availability technologies and the interoperability event, at the MPLS 2005 Vendor Exhibition (Booth #212). At the MPLS conference Chiaro's Senior Network Architect Eric Brendel will give a presentation titled "VPN Route Reflector Architectures and Operational Impacts." "The Enstara IP/MPLS router is designed not only for unparalleled high availability, but also for extensibility and interoperability," said Ken Lewis, president and CEO of Chiaro Networks. "What we call real-world high availability (HA) is important for enabling next-generation business services such as VPNs, IPTV, triple play and real-time applications." The Enstara platform's real-world HA derives from Chiaro's STAR technology, a new approach to reliability that preserves the state of routing protocol sessions during failure, software upgrades or other maintenance events. STAR technology protects against unplanned outages, which not only represent a significant majority of failures encountered in telecommunications networks, but also are the failures that cost carriers both money and customers. Enstara: the First Infrastructure-Class IP/MPLS Platform The highly available Chiaro Enstara IP/MPLS router defines infrastructure-class with the ultra reliability, versatility and product longevity required to consolidate telecommunications carriers' networks. Integrating a number of Chiaro technological breakthroughs -- and applying expertise in the fields of networking, supercomputing and telecommunications-- the intelligent, carefully architected Enstara platform is the first to meld aspects of all these disciplines. As a result, it leads to no less than the transformation of IP/MPLS networks. Chiaro's STateful Assured Routing (STAR) technology is a unique embedded route processor protection mechanism that assures that router-to-router peering sessions are maintained during failure, switchover and software upgrades. This means that the Enstara router control plane is always up and running, under all circumstances, improving the reliability of the overall systems beyond 99.999%. STAR technology supports all routing protocols including MPLS LDP and RSVP-TE, and it moves well beyond the commonly used graceful restart paradigm in terms of effectiveness, speed, protocols supported and scale (i.e., number of routes supported).