Atrica Inc. has come out with release 3.5 of its Carrier Ethernet Systems solution, which now includes what the company calls the industry’s first VPLS-TE capability. The new release also has enriched service provisioning and management capabilities, and Atrica has released new fast Ethernet and gigabit Ethernet demarcation devices.
The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) in November ratified three new MEF technical specifications for carrier-class Ethernet. The specifications provide an interface model between element and network management systems, and create an implementation agreement for circuit emulation services and test procedures for point-to-point (E-Line) and any-to-any (E-LAN) services. However, Umesh Kukreja, Atrica’s director of product marketing, says E-Line and E-LAN are best effort. But with Atrica’s VPLS-TE (Virtual Private LAN Service with Traffic Engineering) capability, service providers are able to deliver tiered services, she says.
Using VPLS-TE, she continues, service providers can configure bandwidth from the access network through to the public network “cloud,” allowing carriers to deliver the same bandwidth and reliability they deliver to a corporate headquarters to branch offices, for example. VPLS-TE also allows carriers to police broadcast communications on their networks, and offers sub-50 millisecond service protection.
Also new with this release from Atrica are a service planning tool and a new CES STM1/OC3 to E1/T1 grooming functionality for scalable support of TDM/CES applications.
The ASPEN Service Provisioning Planning Tool (SPPT) helps service providers simplify network and capacity planning required for the introduction of new services and new service features. With it, carriers can replicate the existing or a new network topology, and analyze the impact of introducing those services in the network.
In release 3.5, Atrica’s TDM integration with Circuit Emulation Services over Ethernet adds OC3/STM1 to DS1/E1 grooming over the Ethernet network. That enables service providers to connect customer equipment such as PBXs or routers to the metro Ethernet network using multiple T1/E1 connections from multiple sites in the network. It allows them to groom these connections into a single OC3/STM1 service handoff at the central office switch or router. This allows a service provider to cost-effectively aggregate TDM and data traffic from multiple subscriber sites into point of presence or central office over a common Ethernet infrastructure. It also provides 50ms protection in the event of network failures.
Atrica’s new Ethernet demarcation devices include the A-100 Fast Ethernet Demarcation Device and the A-200 Gigabit Ethernet demarcation device. Both support point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-multipoint services supported by Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet product portfolio.
The A-100 is a compact device featuring a chassis and a pluggable module with a single user port and a single network port. It features a 10/100Base-Tx copper user port with auto-negotiation and a 100Base-LX fiber network port. The A-100 is available with an AC rear-facing power supply, and features SNMP-based manageability in-band via the network port, as well as local management through the dedicated RJ-45 management port.
The compact A-200 features a chassis and pluggable module with a single user port and single network port. The following modules are available: the AT10060 with a 10/100/1000Base-T copper RJ-45 user port and 10000Base-X SFP, and the AT10061 with a 1000Base-X SFP user port and 1000Base-X SFP network port. All the 1000Base-X interfaces feature hot-swappable SFP transceivers capable of accommodating SX (500m), LX (10km), and LH (70km and 120 km) for complete deployment flexibility. The A-200 is available with an AC or DC rear-facing power supply.
