Accedian Networks' EtherNEWS Blog

Accedian Fills Cell-Site Technology Void

February 3rd, 2010

Widely deployed in 3G & 4G wireless networks, solutions address base station equipment limitations.

Montreal, Canada; February 3rd, 2010 – Accedian Networks ™, the leading provider of Packet Performance Assurance ™ solutions for telecom, cable and wireless communications providers, announced today record demand for EtherNID® and MetroNID® packet assurance demarcation units destined for cell-site deployment in 3G & 4G (WiMAX, LTE) wireless networks. In many cases operators rely on the units to overcome the technical shortcomings of base station networking equipment – in addition to using the advanced service assurance and networking functions the devices provide.

Current base stations excel in radio transmission, data encoding, encryption and session management, but often lack the sophisticated performance monitoring and Ethernet operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) functionality required to maintain quality of service (QoS) and reliability. As 3G & 4G technology moves from the lab to large-scale networks, managing backhaul network performance becomes central to successful service deployment.

Cox Business is one of the leading Ethernet providers in the U.S. and wireless backhaul for the company’s carrier customers is one of the fastest growing applications for the networking technology.

“Performance monitoring and Ethernet OAM is required between every cell site and the mobile switching center,” said Jay Clark, Director of Carrier Product and Sales Operations for Cox Business. “This involves maintaining QoS for multiple flows, something NIDs do very well. Ideally we’ll see hardware-based NID features integrated into the base stations and Ethernet transport elements of the future.”

Accedian’s compact, cost-efficient EtherNID & MetroNID units provide Ethernet & IP monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting features designed into a dedicated silicon processor that provides the processing power required for these demanding tasks. While many base stations offer a handful of OAM and monitoring features, software implementation limits accuracy and scalability, making these functions unreliable or unusable in large-scale, real-world deployments.

FiberTower’s Vijay Lewis, Chief Network Architect of America’s first multi-mobile operator backhaul provider, explains their experience, “With multiple service classes carrying a combination of real-time communication, mobile video, internet and email traffic, FiberTower’s Ethernet wireless backhaul network needs continuous, precise performance monitoring to maintain acceptable quality of experience for subscribers. Latency, jitter, packet loss and throughput need to be assured, and the service needs excellent availability. The Accedian EtherNID unit provides this end-to-end visibility non-intrusively and very precisely – the result of careful engineering that can’t be replicated by simple software-based features sometimes included as afterthoughts in switches, routers and our customer’s base stations.”

Fibertech Networks, also providing backhaul to leading mobile operators, agree. “When you couple today’s network architecture with the capabilities of an EtherNID, you have everything you need, all the OAM functionality – 802.1ag, Y.1731 – plus loopback testing and stats reported in real-time,” explained Tom Perrone, Director of Engineering & Network Planning Manager at Fibertech Networks, adding “We also book-end at the mobile switching center (MSC) with a MetroNID that allows us to monitor end-to-end so we can predict, trend and troubleshoot the network at anytime.”

Accedian solutions will be on display at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Feb 15-18, booth 2B122, as well as at CEBIT (Germany), COMPTEL Spring (Nashville),CTIA (Las Vegas) – see our events calendar at www.Accedian.com for details or to arrange a meeting at these events.

Watch Video case studies of Accedian Networks’ technology in high-performance backhaul applications are available for on-demand viewing at www.Accedian.com. Latest product introductions and announcements are streamed regularly through the EtherNEWS blog, on www.Twitter.com/accedian, and at www.Accedian.com/facebook.

Tags: Ethernet technology, performance, wireless backhaul
Posted in News | No Comments »

Accedian Ethernews, February 2010 Issue
February 1st, 2010

Welcome to the February edition of EtherNEWS. Each month’s issue covers a wide range of applications and solutions related to Ethernet service creation, service assurance, SLA & QoS monitoring and evolving industry standards.

This month we explore non-intrusive QoS testing for Ethernet & IP networks, quantifying the minimal bandwidth consumed by popular monitoring technologies. This month’s instalment is also available in downloadable PDF and Podcast formats.

Active QoS Test Technology

Accedian Networks’ EtherNID®, MetroNID® and MetroNODE™ units are engineered to provide total quality of service (QoS) performance monitoring at both the Ethernet and IP layers. A combination of passive and active test technology is used to provide a comprehensive, precise, and granular end-to-end view of any chosen flow, service, network or link.

Passive monitoring provides per-flow traffic statistics for up to 60 unique services with per-second sampling, providing an unrivalled real-time view into service usage for troubleshooting, engineering and billing purposes.

Accurately measuring one-way / round trip latency and jitter, packet loss, continuity and availability is best accomplished using active testing techniques. Accedian Networks’ units employ the Ethernet OAM, ITU-T Y.1731 performance monitoring (PM) standard, as well as the more advanced Performance Assurance Agent (PAA)™ – capable of measuring performance at both layer 2 & 3 (Ethernet & IP).

These techniques conduct measurements by transmitting a sparse but regular stream of precisely time-stamped “tracer” packets within the service under test (in-band). The test packets’ headers mimic those of the application or SLA of interest (e.g. by specifying VLAN, CoS / DSCP, protocol, drop eligibility, etc.), to ensure they follow the same path, experience the same delay, and are given the same priority as the monitored service. The test packets’ role is to provide a recurring, known reference from which SLA / QoS metrics can be measured, without having a noticeable affect on the service itself (i.e. non-service affecting, non-intrusive).

While the test packets themselves are sent in-band, measurement results, test setup and unit communication are normally performed out-of-band using a separate management network or management VLAN apart from the service under test. This minimizes the amount of bandwidth associated with in-band active QoS testing.

Can You Quantify “Non-Intrusive” ?

The amount of capacity consumed by active testing techniques is normally insignificant – fractions of a 10th of a percent of the monitored circuit or service. The amount of bandwidth required depends on which methods are in use (PAA, OAM PM or both), the testing interval (frequency), the size of the packets specified, and the number of concurrent test sessions originating or terminating at a given test end-point. Up to 100 simultaneous PAA and / or OAM PM sessions are supported by 10 / 100 Mbps / GbE units, up to 1,000 sessions at 10 GbE.

Topology Considerations

The most demanding test conditions normally reflect hub-and spoke or full-mesh topologies. For example, in a typical wireless backhaul deployment, up to 100 towers may home into a single mobile switching center (MSC), with each link provisioned to support multiple priorities (e.g. real-time, best effort, management).

A typical monitoring deployment would involve a MetroNODE10GbE™ packet performance node at the MSC communicating with EtherNID® units at each tower. If PAA is used to monitor QoS at layer 3, and Y.1731 is used to monitor layer 2, each having sessions for all three service classes, the MSC would have to support 300 PAA and 300 OAM PM sessions concurrently. These tests would consume less than one percent of the 10 GbE link.

The amount consumed at each tower would be similarly insignificant, as only three PAA and three Y.1731 sessions would be required to fully monitor QoS. Assuming each tower is provisioned with 100 Mbps, test bandwidth would only amount to less than three percent of link capacity.

Product Highlight: MetroNID Demarcation Unit

Wholesale applications need standards-based, low-latency hand-offs between networks. QoS needs to be established, maintained and monitored over to meet strict SLAs. And providers need on-net visibility for off-net locations to enable and assure end-to-end performance.

A practical way to introduce Ethernet wholesale into existing networks is to deploy Accedian Networks MetroNID™ units as Ethernet Network to Network Interface Units (E-NNIU) and customer-located Network Interface Devices (NIDs). These cost-efficient, hardware-based units provide continuous Ethernet & IP performance monitoring, Ethernet OAM, and high performance MEF service mapping and traffic shaping functionality at a fraction of the cost of a typical switch. With the ability to handle up to 100 flows per unit, you can deliver fully assured Ethernet services over existing networks, and even maintain performance of full mesh and multicast applications to off-net locations. Learn More.

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

February 3, 2010

Accedian Fills Cell-Site Technology Void
With record demand for units destined for cell-site deployment, many operators use Accedian NIDs to overcome base station deficiencies. Press Release.

January 20, 2010

Vector Deploys Accedian
Vector has deployed Accedian’s switch-free Ethernet solutions to deliver premium, fibre-based services to enterprises throughout New Zealand. Vector Press Release.

January 6, 2010

Accedian Reports Record Growth
2009 delivers the fourth consecutive year of 100%+ revenue growth for Accedian, backed by strong global demand for Ethernet business services and wireless backhaul for 3G & 4G (WiMAX, LTE) networks. Press Release.

Events 2010

Visit our events calendar on Accedian.com to learn where we’ll be exhibiting and participating in conferences in 2010. We’re going global with our events team, so we’re likely to be near you this spring or summer.

Posted in EtherNEWS | No Comments »

“Speed is Shaking Up the Brokerage Industry”
January 31st, 2010

“Speed is shaking up the brokerage industry,” Business Week says. Brokerages and trading firms are co-locating their servers as close as possible, in a physical sense, to trading servers used by exchanges.

The reason? Fractions of a second advantages in placing trades. In fact, on Jan. 13, 2010 the Securities & Exchange Commission actually began reviewing high-speed trading, which since 2005 has grown to account for as much as 61 percent of U.S. stock market activity and 70 percent of individual trades, Business Week reports.

And Business Week writes that the speed of trading had something to do with the fact that

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ousted JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the firm that got the best prices for its institutional clients during Bloomberg’s 12-month ranking period from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

During that time, stock volatility quadrupled from its 20- year average and the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung by more than 40 percent.

Goldman was the worldwide winner among brokers that handled at least $25 billion in trades in getting an average price closest to the stock level when the order was received, according to Ancerno.

“They have the most developed and advanced electronic systems,” says Roger Freeman, an analyst who covers brokerages and exchanges at Barclays Plc in New York. “They can get some of the fastest execution times on trades, thereby minimizing some potential costs.”

Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst at New York-based Tabb Group says Goldman’s operations were characterized by close and efficient working on the part of software and server technology teams, who were able to optimize the speed of trading.

“Equities is a technology business now,” McPartland says.

If you want to know how low-latency networks can make a difference in terms of business advantage, Goldman shows how.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-29/goldman-tops-jpmorgan-as-best-broker-as-speed-shakes-up-trading.html

“Speed is shaking up the brokerage industry,” Business Week says. Brokerages and trading firms are co-locating their servers as close as possible, in a physical sense, to trading servers used by exchanges.

The reason? Fractions of a second advantages in placing trades. In fact, on Jan. 13, 2010 the Securities & Exchange Commission actually began reviewing high-speed trading, which since 2005 has grown to account for as much as 61 percent of U.S. stock market activity and 70 percent of individual trades, Business Week reports.

And Business Week writes that the speed of trading had something to do with the fact that

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ousted JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the firm that got the best prices for its institutional clients during Bloomberg’s 12-month ranking period from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009.

During that time, stock volatility quadrupled from its 20- year average and the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung by more than 40 percent.

Goldman was the worldwide winner among brokers that handled at least $25 billion in trades in getting an average price closest to the stock level when the order was received, according to Ancerno.

“They have the most developed and advanced electronic systems,” says Roger Freeman, an analyst who covers brokerages and exchanges at Barclays Plc in New York. “They can get some of the fastest execution times on trades, thereby minimizing some potential costs.”

Kevin McPartland, a senior analyst at New York-based Tabb Group says Goldman’s operations were characterized by close and efficient working on the part of software and server technology teams, who were able to optimize the speed of trading.

“Equities is a technology business now,” McPartland says.

If you want to know how low-latency networks can make a difference in terms of business advantage, Goldman shows how.

by Gary Kim

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-29/goldman-tops-jpmorgan-as-best-broker-as-speed-shakes-up-trading.html

Tags: Goldman Sachs, low latency
Posted in Applications, News | 1 Comment »

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