At AfricaCom 2009, held 18-19 November in Cape Town, RAD Data Communications introduced its ETX-204A Carrier Ethernet demarcation device, which delivers SLA-based Layer 2 and Layer 3 business services to the customer premises over native Ethernet access.
p>At AfricaCom 2009, held 18-19 November in Cape Town, RAD Data Communications introduced its ETX-204A Carrier Ethernet demarcation device, which delivers SLA-based Layer 2 and Layer 3 business services to the customer premises over native Ethernet access.
The ETX-204A provides delineation between the user network and the transport network for those services, as well as for mobile backhaul.
With extensive service delivery, performance monitoring, and service protection and redundancy capabilities, the ETX-204A transports up to one gigabit of user throughput with differentiated quality of service and end-to-end monitoring to ensure SDH-like performance and 99.999 percent reliability.
The device smoothly handles multi-priority traffic while ensuring latency, jitter, and packet delivery performance on a per-flow basis. The ETX-204A has unmatched traffic engineering capabilities, including remarking of Level 2 and Level 3 traffic based on a number of factors to ensure simple and efficient traffic prioritisation not only at the demarcation point, but across the network.
Cost-saving mobile backhaul transport gateway
As a mobile backhaul transport gateway, the ETX-204A reduces backhaul costs by combining "smart demarcation" with network synchronisation capabilities in a single device, efficiently managing mobile broadband traffic from the IP NodeB or LTE eNodeB to the network core with SLA assurance.
With SyncToP, a breakthrough timing-over-packet (ToP) feature set, the ETX-204A delivers clock recovery and distribution using IEEE 1588v2 (1588-2005) Precision Timing Protocol, Synchronous Ethernet (Sync-E) and a built-in input/output clock interface. It also provides unique flexibility in supporting 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.
"By delivering the same timing accuracy and reliability as experienced over SDH networks, the ETX-204A enables cellular providers and carriers whose transport networks are utilised by cellular providers to migrate multiple generations of mobile backhaul traffic to packet switched networks," said Amir Karo, RAD's Vice President of Marketing. "In this migration, mobile operators and transport providers can ensure service continuity and eliminate service disruptions, impaired cell handoffs, and excessive dropped calls."
EtherAccess feature set
RAD's EtherAccess feature set is incorporated into the ETX-204A. These unified features enable seamless Ethernet access by providing the 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.
