Hammerhead Systems’ service-based PBT strategy

Hammerhead Systems has announced a service-based PBT (Provider Backbone Transport) strategy that adds the MEF E-LAN and E-Tree connection models to the traditional PBT E-Line model. The move is the first in the industry to aim PBT directly at creating retail services rather than at managing traffic and failure modes. Hammerhead also announced a partnership with Soapstone Networks, a unit of Avici, to provide flexible control plane support for the Hammerhead products. We believe this is an important step in evolving PBT to serve a key mission in both metro infrastructure and service infrastructure, and for the first time it gives some credence to the PBT-versus-MPLS battle that has raged in the media.