With an eye on the Carrier Ethernet World Congress, which will be held September 21-24 in Berlin, RAD Data Communications has announced that it now has the technology to enable Carrier Ethernet to replace TDM/SDH in the access.
“We are confident that the enhancements we are introducing in our EtherAccess® feature set for Carrier Ethernet solutions – versatile timing over packet capabilities, hardware-based Ethernet OAM, performance measurement and traffic management as well as support for G.8032 ring protection – will assure carriers and mobile transport operators that the access segment of the packet access and backhaul network is as reliable as TDM/SDH,” states Yacov Cazes, Director of Carrier Ethernet Product Management and Business Development at RAD Data Communications. “In practical terms, the intelligence and processing power we have incorporated in our Ethernet access devices eliminate a major stumbling block to high capacity service delivery for business and mobile applications, particularly HSPA and LTE,” he continues. “Now the industry will be able to fully capitalize on Carrier Ethernet’s tremendous flexibility, higher bandwidth and significantly lower cost structure.”
RAD’s unique SyncToP™ timing over packet feature set ensures clock recovery and distribution using IEEE 1588v2 (1588-2005) Precision Timing Protocol, Synchronous Ethernet (Sync-E) and a built-in input/output clock interface. This combination supports the simultaneous use of different clock transfer methodologies, such as employing 1588v2 to receive the clock from the network and distributing it to the cell-site with Sync-E.
“While support for Ethernet OAM is widespread among vendors of Carrier Ethernet access equipment, RAD is a pioneer in embedding Ethernet OAM capabilities into its hardware,” Cazes notes. “There are many advantages to such implementation, including greater processing power to handle multiple OAM sessions simultaneously and improved failure detection performance,” he explains. “While most other vendors offer statistically-based measurements, RAD provides real values based on real user traffic.”
Moreover, to ensure metering continuity across the Metro Ethernet network, RAD’s EtherAccess feature set offers unique capabilities that assign appropriate priority values to low-priority Ethernet frames at the network ingress. Priority values are assigned according to the color scheme to ensure metering continuity across the Metro Ethernet network. In case of congestion, user traffic marked “low priority” is dropped first. “The outcome of this capability is better service differentiation and a better allocation of network resources,” Cazes notes.
For Carrier Ethernet to successfully take its place in the access it must imitate the resiliency and restoration typical of TDM/SDH networks, to which carriers and customers have long grown accustomed. RAD, therefore, has implemented in its E-NTUs the industry’s G.8032 standard governing Ethernet ring protection. “This preserves the speed and simplicity of Layer 2 switching, adds fast restoration and is highly cost-effective,” Cazes concludes. “It will make a particularly critical contribution to 4G backhaul over Ethernet for operators that connect their base stations in a ring topology.”
RAD has incorporated its EtherAccess feature set into its Ethernet demarcation units, aggregators and integrated Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) access devices over fiber, DSL and copper circuits. These unified EtherAccess features enable seamless Ethernet access by providing same service attributes and user experience, so that Carrier Ethernet services can be ubiquitously extended to the subscriber premises, with flexible traffic management capabilities and end-to-end service level assurance regardless of the underlying access technology or the number of intermediate operator networks.
