Carrier Ethernet Access Solutions

EANTC, which offers vendor-neutral consultancy and test facilities for network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprise clients, designed the test program to allow network operators to validate end-to-end Carrier Ethernet services across multiple carriers using External Network-Network Interfaces as specified by the Metro Ethernet Forum. The global interconnect test will be demonstrated at Ethernet Europe 2011.

RAD’s ETX-204A Carrier Ethernet demarcation device was tested as a wholesale provider Network Interface Device, terminating the end-to-end EVPL and EVPLAN services and monitoring their availability and performance through Ethernet OAM and Connectivity Fault Management, according to company officials. The Carrier Ethernet device relies on its Layer 2 loopback with MAC swap functionality to assist the interconnection switches in learning the MAC addresses of new service access points. The demarcation device as well plays a vital role in generating user traffic using RFC-2544 test schemes.

The E-NNI standard

"Recent developments just as the E-NNI standard and the introduction of Ethernet Exchange services take Ethernet services beyond the Metro and into a national and global reach," said Yacov Cazes, director of Carrier Ethernet Access Solutions at RAD Data Communications, in a statement. "This year’s test shows that intelligent Carrier Ethernet demarcation is instrumental in addressing the provisioning and monitoring challenges that such services intrinsically face, and provides the required functionalities for testing and managing SLA-based services across these different networks."

Four operators participated in EANTC’s test, establishing multi-segment EVPL and EVPLAN services across their different networks.

In other Carrier Ethernet news, eircom, the principal provider of fixed-line telecommunications services in Ireland with roughly 2.6 million fixed-line telephone access channels in service, announced that it will now rely on RAD’s fiber demarcation devices to deliver symmetric Ethernet services to businesses across the country at speeds up to 1Gbps.

RAD’s ETX-202A, a fully featured demarcation device, was selected by the Irish company afterwards many lab tests and trials. The ETX-202A provides transport demarcation to Layer 3 business services just as IP VPN, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and dedicated Internet access over native Ethernet access with high reliability and management, according to company officials.