Alcatel-Lucent 3HE00028AA Gigabit Ethernet Line Card – Full Product Profile
The Alcatel-Lucent 3HE00028AA is a high‑density, feature‑rich line card designed specifically for the 7750 Service Router (SR) family, which forms the backbone of many carrier‑grade IP/MPLS networks. This module provides a flexible and scalable interface for Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, enabling service providers to deliver a wide range of residential, business, and mobile backhaul services over a single, converged infrastructure. Its robust hardware architecture, combined with advanced software capabilities, ensures line‑rate performance, high availability, and granular service control.
Physically, the 3HE00028AA is a full‑height, half‑width card that fits into any slot of the 7750 SR chassis. It is equipped with twenty‑four 10/100/1000BASE‑T copper ports, along with four combo ports that support either SFP‑based fiber (1000BASE‑X) or additional copper. This mixed‑port configuration offers deployment flexibility for both short‑reach office connections and long‑haul fiber uplinks. Each port supports auto‑negotiation, MDI/MDIX crossover, and Energy‑Efficient Ethernet (EEE) to reduce power consumption during low traffic periods.
At the core of the line card is a powerful network processor that handles all packet forwarding, classification, and queuing functions at wire speed. The card supports a forwarding capacity of up to 48 Gbps (full duplex) and a packet rate of over 35 million packets per second (Mpps) for 64‑byte frames. This performance is sustained even with complex operations such as MPLS label imposition/disposition, VLAN translation, and access control list (ACL) filtering, all performed in hardware without impacting the CPU.
Service awareness is a standout feature. The 3HE00028AA fully supports hierarchical QoS (HQoS) with up to eight traffic classes per port, each with multiple sub‑queues. This allows operators to enforce strict service‑level agreements (SLAs) for different customer types – for example, prioritizing VoIP and video traffic over best‑effort data. Policing, shaping, and WRED (Weighted Random Early Detection) are available per queue, ensuring congestion management and fair bandwidth distribution.
For service delineation, the card implements IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging, VLAN stacking (Q‑in‑Q), and VLAN translation at wire speed. It also supports IEEE 802.1ad Provider Bridging and IEEE 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) for large‑scale Ethernet networks. In the MPLS domain, the card handles both MPLS‑TP and full MPLS with LDP and RSVP‑TE, enabling efficient traffic engineering and fast reroute protection.
Synchronization is critical for mobile backhaul and TDM emulation. The 3HE00028AA includes a built‑in timing engine that supports Synchronous Ethernet (Sync‑E) and IEEE 1588v2 Precision Time Protocol with hardware timestamping. It can act as a boundary clock or transparent clock, ensuring accurate phase and frequency alignment for LTE‑Advanced and 5G networks. The card also provides an external BITS/SSU input for legacy clock distribution.
Management and diagnostics are integrated through the 7750 SR’s operating system (TiMOS). The line card reports extensive performance monitoring data, including per‑port and per‑queue statistics, error counters, and historical utilization graphs. It supports remote loopback tests, RFC 2544 and Y.1564 service activation tests, and packet capture for deep troubleshooting. All alarms and events are forwarded to the central network management system via SNMP and syslog.
Reliability is ensured by redundant power feeds from the chassis backplane, on‑board voltage regulators, and error‑correcting code (ECC) protection for all memory. The card is hot‑swappable – it can be inserted or removed while the system is running, with automatic detection and initialization. The operating temperature range is 0°C to 50°C, with forced‑air cooling provided by the chassis fan trays.
Environmental compliance includes NEBS Level 3 (GR‑63‑CORE and GR‑1089‑CORE), ETSI EN 300 386, and FCC Part 15. The card meets RoHS and REACH directives, and carries CE and UL certifications. Its MTBF is rated at over 350,000 hours, reflecting the high quality of materials and manufacturing processes.
Typical deployment scenarios include aggregation of DSLAMs and Ethernet access nodes, providing business VPN services (VPLS, VPWS), and serving as a gateway for mobile backhaul traffic. The 3HE00028AA is also used in data center interconnect (DCI) applications when paired with appropriate optics.
In summary, the Alcatel‑Lucent 3HE00028AA is a versatile, high‑capacity line card that delivers outstanding performance, service flexibility, and operational resilience. It enables service providers to build scalable, future‑proof networks that can adapt to evolving traffic demands and emerging technologies.
