Archive for June, 2009

Accedian EtherNEWS, July 2009 Issue

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
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Welcome to the July 2009 issue of EtherNEWS, offered in video and Podcast versions. Each month’s edition covers a wide range of applications and solutions related to Ethernet service creation, service assurance, SLA & QoS monitoring and evolving industry standards.

This month’s feature video shows how demarcation units can replace more costly switches or routers at customer and cell sites with delay-free traffic aggregation functionality.  Without the switching overhead, these units can more efficiently aggregate wire-speed traffic, while providing granular de-aggregation using sophisticated layer 2-4 filters.  Helping to both assure and maintain a low-latency budget, switch-free aggregation can be combined with continuous QoS monitoring, Ethernet OAM and zero-latency H-QoS traffic grooming.  Join us in our lab for a hands-on demo of this technology used in a 4:1 aggregation application.

Application Highlights

The feature application video in this EtherNEWS edition is also available as a free Video Podcast. Download Now.
Product Highlight: Switch-Free Aggregation

Accedian Networks’ MetroNID ™ units offer true wire-speed, multi-port aggregation that combines up to four clients’ traffic into a GbE uplink. Performed by the unit’s hardware-based Fast-Thru™ engine, aggregation performance challenges the capabilities of high-end routers and switches.

With packet-processing this advanced, aggregated traffic can be service-mappedfilteredrate limited and shaped without adding delay or jitter to real-time applications. More than just VLAN aggregation, traffic can be separated by C/S VLAN, MAC / IP addresses, or sophisticated layer 2-4 packet selection criteria.

When combined with the advanced Ethernet OAM and service assurance capabilities available in the ESAP ™ Ethernet Service Assurance Platform, MetroNID units become micro-network elements that enable ultra-low latency Carrier Ethernet services over any network, without upgrading or replacing existing access platforms.

For more information about Accedian Networks solutions, please visit our document library on Accedian.com.

About Accedian Networks
Accedian Networks™ is a leading provider of Packet Performance Assurance solutions that enable service providers to deliver carrier-grade, packet-based applications and LAN services over wireless and wireline networks.

The Ethernet Service Assurance Platform (ESAP™) and EtherNID demarcation units provide in-service monitoring, loopback testing and service management for wireless backhaul, business services and hand-off applications, and establish standards-based, end-to-end operations, administration & maintenance (OAM) and assured Service Level Agreements (SLAs) over converged, multi-provider networks.

For additional information, visit: http://www.accedian.com/ or call 1-866-685-8181.

Latest News

Vision EMS Automates Ethernet
23 June, 2009

Managing Carrier Ethernet services enabled and assured by the company’s EtherNID ™ & MetroNID ™ units, the Vision EMS reduces operational effort to the absolute minimum, enabling efficient deployment of demanding, large-scale Ethernet wireless backhaul and business access offerings.  Powerful workflow-automation and element management significantly reduces the cost, time and effort to deploy, manage and maintain Ethernet services.
Learn More.

Featured Solutions

Imagine install so fast, so simple, that even your customer can do it. With Plug & Go ™, your EtherNID ™ & MetroNID ™ units take care of it. They also configure their own management settings and let you know they’re online – so you can take control and finish the job from your desk.

No more staging. No more trained technicians on-site. Delivering the absolute minimum OpEx, Plug & Go makes installing our units as simple as a cable modem. Learn More.

Plug and Go


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Accedian Automates Ethernet Service Deployment

Monday, June 29th, 2009
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Vision EMS™ reduces effort from weeks to minutes; speeds and simplifies install, management.

Montreal, Canada; June 23rd, 2009 – Accedian Networks ™, a leading provider of Packet Performance Assurance ™ solutions for telecom, cable and wireless communications providers, introduced today the Vision EMS™, a workflow-automation and element management system that significantly reduces the cost, time and effort to deploy, manage and maintain Ethernet services.  By automating standard operating procedures, the system can reduce new service provisioning time from weeks to minutes.

Managing Carrier Ethernet services enabled and assured by the company’s EtherNID™ & MetroNID™ units, the Vision EMS reduces operational effort to the absolute minimum, enabling efficient deployment of demanding, large-scale Ethernet wireless backhaul and business access offerings.  The system automatically provisions new units and related services upon installation, eliminating time-consuming, error-prone on-site configuration, while integrating with existing network management and operational support systems.

Advanced fault, inventory and security applications tie in with provisioning, backup and upgrade features to further automate ongoing service management.  Leveraging the advanced monitoring, troubleshooting and traffic conditioning capabilities of EtherNID & MetroNID units, the Vision EMS allows operators to maintain best-in-class Quality of Service (QoS) and meet strict Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance requirements.

The Vision EMS is built on the Nakina Domain Control and Intelligence (DCI) platform, a carrier-grade management solution deployed by Tier-1 telecom operators worldwide.  Featuring a highly-scalable, open, service oriented architecture (SOA), the Nakina DCI platform interoperates with equipment from leading vendors to simplify the management of multi-vendor networks.

“Responding to the rapid growth of high-speed wireless and demanding business applications, service providers are moving from selective deployment of basic Ethernet services to large-scale performance-assured offerings,” explained Patrick Ostiguy, founding President & CEO of Accedian Networks.  “The combination of scale and performance complicates service roll out, delaying new projects in the face of fierce competition.  The Vision EMS, combined with our unit’s Plug & Go™ intelligence, allow providers to accelerate their time to market without compromising quality.  It’s a turn-key solution to new revenue.”

Complete solution information is available here.


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Enter the Portal: SLAs on Trial

Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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Ethernet customers are becoming increasingly savvy about the performance of their services.  First adopted by enterprises and wireless carriers to backhaul best-effort Internet, email and file-server applications, Ethernet is now increasingly carrying business-critical voice, video and transactional applications.  IT groups at the Fortune 500s and operations staff maintaining 3G wireless are starting to keep a close eye on performance.  Now, when Ethernet goes down, a simple 3 step process begins: first outage, call service provider; second outage, change service provider; third outage, find a new job.

To avoid this unpalatable third step, Ethernet customers want to open the hood on their service level agreements (SLAs).  They no longer just want financial penalties when services don’t live up to latency, jitter and availability specs – they want to see what happened and to know who’s to blame.  And their demands aren’t easy to meet.  They’re asking for real-time reporting over web-portals, so they can check up on their SLA and service performance at any time – and they expect their service provider to provide this visibility or they’ll find one that will (step 2).

Ethernet / IP Service Performance Portal, Accedian Networks

Ethernet / IP Service Performance Portal, Accedian Networks

Amazingly, despite the monitoring, back-office and security headaches customer performance-reporting portals pose, service providers who bit the bullet are happy they did.  Conversations I’ve had recently with leading ILECs and CLECs in the northeast U.S. indicate that over 60% of Ethernet issues originate within the customer site – end-to-end connectivity issues they want to pin on their provider are usually LAN or CPE problems.  Customers with portals require far less support – these accounts call them less, blame them less, and resolve issues faster when they know when the problem is theirs to fix.

Service providers benefit in other ways that are just as important.  Their customers come to appreciate how solid the provider’s network is, building loyalty and a cooperative – instead of hostile – relationship that builds long term value.   Providers can use historic performance and usage reporting to show customers when they need to upgrade their service – to higher bandwidth, a higher service tier (silver to gold SLAs), or to add incremental services (e.g. traffic shaping or EIR / burst allowances).  The portal ultimately puts the service provider in the driver’s seat – less operations staff in reaction mode, and a gateway to growing business with the most valuable customers: the ones they already have.

Implementing Ethernet service portals doesn’t have to be dental-level painful – with proper demarcation and centralized monitoring many providers find that it’s much quicker and less costly than they thought.  By hosting portals directly from operations’ systems, IT staff involvement is minimal, streamlining the logistics and politics of getting customers connected.


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