Aktino on Monday introduced the AK5000, a new Ethernet-over-copper platform designed to help service providers scale their business-class Ethernet networks.
“What we are trying to do is give ubiquitous and scalable solutions to our customers,” said Hamid Lalani, senior vice president of marketing and product management, explaining that carriers want to provide a minimum of 10mbps to a majority of their business subscribers without being limited by the reach of their fiber or the density of their copper network. “Our technology can give you ubiquitous 10mbps in a network with only four pairs [of copper]. All the existing technologies that came before us needed twice if not more that many pairs.”
Aktino’s copper-conservation approach is important to ubiquity, said Lalani, because not all businesses are served by eight pairs. He cited statistics from one ILEC customer that showed 82 percent of its business customers were served by four or more copper pairs while only 38 percent had eight or more.
The AK5000 joins predecessors the AK3000 and AK4000, which also use standards-based DMT (VDSL2) technology and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) techniques to mitigate self and alien crosstalk in copper pair binders so that fewer pairs are required to transmit higher-bandwidth speeds farther distances.
However, unlike the AK3000 and AK4000, which are point-to-point systems, the AK5000 is a point-to-multipoint system
“You don’t have to backhaul individual customers back to a CO router or Ethernet switch. You can do it over a single aggregated link, so you can make it cost-effective to scale as the market grows,” said Lalani, explaining that the AK5000 includes a gigabit Ethernet uplink that aggregates multiple customers at the edge of the network. “We think this is a natural migration for the market.”
Designed for enterprise deployments, the AK5000 also includes enhanced reliability and performance. The compact 5U shelf provides two central, redundant control cards that handle aggregation, uplink and management. It also houses up 16 line cards, each providing 5mbps to 50mbps of bandwidth for a cumulative throughput of 1gbps.
In addition, the AK5000 dedicates each line card to a single customer unlike residential DSLAMs that include up to 24 per card. “If a line card fails, you take down 24 customers,” Lalani said of such DSLAMs. “While that may be acceptable in the residential market where they are paying $49.99, $39.99 or $12.99 per month, that’s not acceptable if you are paying $1,000 per month for 10mb Ethernet.”
Aktino www.aktino.com
