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presents

Carrier Ethernet:
Taking Care of Business

Forecasting Demand
Driving Adoption With SLAs
Targeting SMBs
Giving Customers More Control
Finding New Frontiers for Ethernet

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 Carrier Ethernet:
Taking Care of Business

an xchange eBook
group publisher Mike Saxby
[email protected], Ext.1666
associate publisher Betsy Chandler, Ext. 1055
[email protected]
account executives Tammy Fellows
[email protected], Ext.1243
Suzy Kelley
[email protected], Ext.1185
marketing and
communications manager Kyle Blair
[email protected], Ext. 1066

group editor Khali Henderson

[email protected], Ext.1678
6 Taking Care of Business editor in chief Paula Bernier
[email protected], Ext.1669
Carrier Ethernet has been gathering steam over the past few years, but it now executive editor Bob Wallace
is reaching a critical point where it is becoming many carriers’ fastest-growing [email protected], Ext.2006
enterprise offer. With many advances in its corner, Ethernet finally may have the managing editor Megan McCoy
[email protected], Ext.1044
advantage over traditional technologies like ATM and frame relay in meeting enter- assistant
prises’ ever-growing demands for bandwidth and support for converged services. managing editors Cara Sievers
[email protected], Ext.1609
David Worford
8 Special Delivery [email protected], Ext.1087
associate editor Tara Seals
In communications networks, customers want guarantees, and being able to [email protected]
satisfy that desire is what’s ultimately going to drive carrier Ethernet services business and Kelly M. Teal
demand. A new MEF certification will help providers prove service quality. regulatory editor [email protected], Ext.1020

production director Chris Vernam

11 Targeting the SMB Set director of art Dolly Ahles
Service providers targeting the SMB market now have an important new tool at group traffic manager Danielle Dunlap
traffic coordinator Mike Palmer
their disposal in the form of carrier Ethernet. In addition to being based on Ether- editorial artist Megan McCoy
net, carrier Ethernet is ideal for the SMB space because it allows customers to up advertising art directors Tamara Elliott
their bandwidth quickly and incrementally as they require. Israel Laveaga
Karen Williams
12 Customer Network Management Builds Satisfaction, Loyalty Angela Wright
classified art director Bruce Beck
Rather than keeping business customers in hands-off mode waiting for their classified traffic
services, imagine if you could outfit them with the tools to order, and receive, ser- coordinator Makeasa Rosemond
color technician Bruce Beck
vices as they need them? That’s just beginning to happen with customer network reprints manager Jennifer Thompson
management tools related to carrier Ethernet services. web designer Eric Sedlmayer
web ad coordinator Rob Jackson
14 New Frontiers for Ethernet
circulation director Simone Kjolsrud
Competitive carriers in the Wild West of enterprise services are finding that sub- [email protected]
scribers are continuing to seek higher-speed, IP-based applications. For providers circulation manager Marly White
circulation sales Ext. 1285
wanting to meet this growing enterprise need, Ethernet represents something of
circulation list rental Ext. 2081
an open range for those that can take advantage of it.
trade show director Dana Hicks
16 Five Questions With Atrica’s Umesh Kukreja trade show manager Sarah Waschler
trade show coordinator Jerry Murphy
Atrica Inc. is a pioneer in the area of carrier Ethernet. The company prides itself exhibit sales coordinator Danica Cullins
on the flexibility and simplicity of its end-to-end carrier Ethernet solution. Umesh production coordinator Dawn Carter-Noe
Kukreja, director of marketing at Atrica, recently spoke with xchange about trends education coordinator Marlo Sneddon
in carrier Ethernet and what Atrica is doing to help service providers and their art director Sean Egan
customers leverage its benefits.

president/ceo
Jennifer L. Bolton
presents chief financial officer
Teresa Dunaway
controller
Kelly Ridley

Carrier Ethernet: director of human resources

Linda Maddox

Taking Care of Business Corporate Headquarters

3300 N. Central Ave., Suite 300, Phoenix, AZ 85012
+1 480 990 1101 • Fax: +1 480 990 0819
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Sponsored By

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 ADVERTORIAL

Your Customers Are Ready

for Carrier Ethernet, Are You?

B
usiness customers are ready to break through the bandwidth and
delivery-time barriers of traditional, TDM-based services and realize
the joys of flexible, simplified networking. So the time is right for
service providers to help customers make that move by delivering affordable,
guaranteed-quality Carrier Ethernet.
For service providers ready to win the accounts and loyalty of business
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Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet solutions give service providers the ability to bring
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universal transport architecture. For business customers, Carrier Ethernet Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet solutions harness the low cost, scalability and
represents the ability to get affordable, flexible connectivity when they want it and ease of management of plain old Ethernet and pair them with innovations in
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have a built-in comfort level with Ethernet because of its ubiquity in the LAN. stringent demands of next-generation transport networks. This integrated
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• Guaranteed, end-to-end SLAs with
Committed Information Rate (CIR)
and Excess Information Rate (EIR)
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• Integrated TDM traffic support
• Carrier-class point-and-click,
centralized service provisioning and
management
Service providers leveraging Atrica's
platforms are consistently recognized as
leaders in the Carrier Ethernet space. For
example, the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF)
recently named Orange Business Services
the “Carrier Ethernet European Service
Provider of the Year − Best in Business.”
Earlier this year, the MEF presented
Optimum Lightpath with the “Outstanding
Innovation” designation based on the
strength of its broad spectrum of innovation
on the technical, service and business fronts.
Optimum Lightpath has leveraged its Carrier
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4 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

1106_Atrica.indd 4 10/25/06 10:45:43 AM

 ADVERTORIAL

services in the Greater New York Metropolitan area. Last year, the MEF named
Japan’s KVH the “Asia Pacific Service Provider of the Year.”
But those are just three of the 30 network operators Atrica has outfitted
with Carrier Ethernet solutions. Others include Cox Communications, DT,
The Many Benefits of Atrica’s Flexible and
France’s Sanef Telecoms, Spain’s Al-Pi, and Energie AG, which is Atrica’s Simple Carrier Ethernet Solution
most recently announced customer. Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet systems give network
Atrica’s Director of Marketing Umesh Kukreja says that Energie AG has operators flexibility and simplicity, which allow
been offering Ethernet service for some time, but the company’s existing them to rapidly and easily expand their service
platform didn’t scale to support mission-critical SLAs. So, Energie AG turned offerings as customer demands grow and change,
to Atrica for a Carrier Ethernet solution that will meet its needs today and in dramatically reduce their capital and operational
the future. Energie AG is using the new Atrica-powered Layer 2 network to expenses, and improve their profitability.
offer customized, high-speed business communications, wholesale, backhaul,
aggregation and triple-play services throughout its service region.
Orange Business Services is leveraging the most advanced carrier-class
»Flexibility
Flexibility of Bandwidth
features of Atrica’s Carrier Ethernet technology − such as standard OAM » CIR for applications requiring SDH-like bandwidth
− to deliver ground-breaking and innovative services such as Virtual Private guarantees
LAN Service with Traffic Engineering (VPLS-TE). VPLS-TE adds carrier-class » EIR bandwidth for best-effort applications
traffic-engineering attributes to standard VPLS capabilities to deliver carrier- » Mix of CIR and EIR for bursty applications such as
a frame relay upgrade
class, traffic-engineered E-LAN services with hard SLAs per application.
Sanef Telecoms, a business unit of motorway leader Sanef Group and Flexibility of Service Creation
an innovative regional telecommunications operator, is leveraging Atrica’s » Allows creation of service packages to meet
Carrier Ethernet Systems to deliver customized, high-speed and very high- specific market demands and dynamics
speed communications services to local authorities, public institutions » For example, a 10mbps bundle for the SMB
market could include 3mbps of CIR and 7mbps
and businesses situated near its motorways in France, and to expand its
of EIR
wholesale services business.
Cox Business Services deployed Atrica's Carrier Ethernet solution Flexibility in Delivering Customized Solutions for
to deliver a converged voice, video and data services network for the the Business Customer
New Orleans Public Schools. Designed to link nearly 140 schools and Flexible Competitive Engagement
administrative sites, the network delivers high-speed, guaranteed services » Can respond to competitive offers based on SDH,
including Internet access, VoIP, IP/H.323 videoconferencing and distance DWDM and Ethernet services
learning to each location.
Atrica-based universal transport networks support a wide breadth
of innovative services. Business services include E-LAN, E-Line, Virtual
»Simplicity
Simple, Highly Resilient Services
Private LAN Services (VPLS) and VPLS-TE, Circut Emulation Services (CES), » Rings or meshes in the aggregation/core network
Internet access from multimegabit up to 100mbps and video conferencing. » Dual-homed access rings
Residential triple-play applications include FTTx backhaul, hundreds of TV » End-to-end SLAs compared to “sectional” SLAs
channels, video on demand (VOD), personal video recording, interactive from competitors
video applications such as remote learning and gaming, and voice and Simplicity of Service Creation
video telephony. In addition, with the rapid growth of mobile video and data » Point-and-click service provisioning
services, mobile operators need a different type of transport to address » Fast time-to-service delivery compared to
new services, functionality and cost models. So, Atrica’s solutions support alternative options from competitors
wireless backhaul functionality. Simplicity of Service Upgrades
Atrica’s complete product line includes the A-100 and A-210 Ethernet » Operators can commit to fast service upgrades to
demarcation devices; the A-2000 family of Carrier Ethernet Edge Switches; match customers’ business requirements
the A-4000 family of Carrier Ethernet Aggregation Switches; the A-8000 » CNM implementation delivers “customer
family of Carrier Ethernet Core Switches; and the Atrica Service Platform controlled” service upgrades for premium
for Ethernet Networks (ASPEN), an integrated service provisioning and
customers
management system.
Simplicity of Upselling Customer Bandwidth
For more information on Atrica solutions, visit www.atrica.com.
» Sales teams are empowered to upgrade
customers’ bandwidth

www.xchangemag.com/ebooks November 2006 | 5

Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

By Khali Henderson

Taking
Care of
Business
Enterprises Demand for Carrier-Class
Ethernet Services Grows

Carrier Ethernet
has been gathering American metro Ethernet services market (retail and wholesale) to
steam over the past grow from $866.2 million in 2005 to $3.4 billion in 2012.
few years, but it now is reaching a critical point where it is becoming Vertical Systems Group Inc.’s numbers show U.S. retail business
many carriers’ fastest-growing enterprise offer. It’s no wonder a Ethernet services market will reach $24 billion by 2010. The sub-10mbps
combination of technical network standards and service definitions have market will be the fastest-growing segment during the forecast period,
conspired to transform Ethernet from a low-cost, best-effort LAN service driven primarily by new copper-based service deployments among
into a truly carrier-class contender for WAN applications like Internet smaller businesses and those not served by fiber (see related story,
access, private lines and VPNs. With these advances in its corner, “Targeting the SMB Set,” on Page 11). The bulk of the revenue – some $19
Ethernet finally may have the advantage over traditional technologies billion – is for 10mbps speeds and above required by larger enterprises.
like ATM and frame relay in meeting enterprises’ ever-growing demands Indeed, interest in adoption of Ethernet services is growing. A study
for bandwidth and support for converged services. published this summer by Forrester Research Inc. showed 10 percent of
“Enterprise bandwidth requirements are growing – depending on enterprises deployed the technology last year, and 23 percent said they
what analyst you listen to – anywhere from 33 percent to 100 percent per are “very interested” in doing so this year. Retail and wholesale trade
year,” says Mike Tighe, chairman of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and businesses and public sector organizations expressed the highest levels
the director of strategy for Verizon Communications Inc. “And, also they of interest in adopting Ethernet services, Forrester reports.
are placing converged applications, such as VoIP, video and conferencing, Frost & Sullivan’s top vertical markets vary. Listed in order by
on a network infrastructure. They see Ethernet, with its ability to support Ethernet demand, they include financial, government, education,
literally up to a gig and sometimes up to 10gigs worth of traffic, as an ideal health care and legal.
way to rapidly scale their networks to support their applications.” Frost & Sullivan’s research mirrors Tighe’s assertions about the drivers
Besides being the spokesman for the MEF, Tighe spent three years behind enterprise Ethernet demand. “Increasing numbers of bandwidth-
running Verizon’s nascent Ethernet services intensive applications such as common
business, so he has first-hand experience with North American Metro Ethernet gateway interface, medical imaging and
enterprises’ ravenous appetites for Ethernet. Service Market Forecast video are placing unprecedented demands
From second quarter 2005 to second quarter (in U.S. $ millions) on networks, and Ethernet is considered the
2006, the ILEC’s Ethernet revenue grew at $3,500 most cost-effective and manageable solution
126 percent, he says. to such data traffic,” the research firm notes.
$3,400
Tighe’s experiences are shared by As defined by the MEF, there are
$3,000
other operators. Kevin Curran, senior several basic services that comprise carrier
vice president of marketing for Optimum Ethernet. These include point-to-point E-Line
$2,500
Lightpath, a subsidiary of Cablevision and multipoint-to-multipoint E-LAN, which
Systems Corp., says his company has provide transparent, private line, virtual
$2,000
recorded “north of 150 percent growth in private line and LAN services. Typically,
Ethernet revenue” in the past year. And, they have been deployed in support of
$1,500
Craig Dassner, senior engineer with Cox applications such as Internet access or
Omaha, says sales of Ethernet services to storage area networking. Cox’s Dassner,
$1,000
large businesses have doubled between for example, says the company’s large
$866.2
2005 and 2006. enterprise clients are demanding any-to-any
$500
Industry growth rates for metro connectivity as well as storage and data
Ethernet services are more than 20 percent center replication using Ethernet facilities.
0
compounded annually, according to Frost & 2005 2012 Increasingly, carrier Ethernet services
Sullivan researchers. In a September 2006 are being used for video conferencing and
Source: Frost & Sullivan, Sept. 2006
report, Frost & Sullivan forecast the North VoIP, which demand lower delay, jitter and

6 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

frame loss than is available with a best-effort with legacy technology like ATM (see related
service. In fact, Optimum Lightpath’s Curran says “It’s a sign of the maturity story, “Special Delivery,” on Page 8).
his company’s No. 1 product is a bundle that “They are able to offer better and broader
includes 10mbps of Ethernet connectivity and
of Ethernet and that SLAs because of the standards,” notes Maria
50,000 voice minutes (over Ethernet) per month customers have confidence Zeppetella, senior analyst for Frost & Sullivan.
for $2,500. The bundle accounts for a third of the However, she says, service providers would
to implement Ethernet
carrier’s sales, he says. be well-advised to educate their customers.
“It’s a sign of the maturity of Ethernet and networks to support Not only might it help them earn more of
that customers have confidence to implement their mission-critical an enterprise’s business, it can help them to
Ethernet networks to support their mission-critical charge more. While rate decreases of 50 percent
applications,” says MEF’s Tighe. applications.” are driving enterprises’ shift to Ethernet, losing
What characterizes this more mature – MEF's Mike Tighe higher-priced legacy customers has not been
Ethernet? According to the MEF there are five without pain for service providers, she explains.
key service attributes (see inset article, “Carrier Ethernet Defined,” “Price competition is still really tough,” says Zeppetella. “It’s hard
below), including standardized services, scalability, reliability, service for them to make the margins that they want. There are still too many
management and QoS. providers in the market. There are over 100 in North America.”
The MEF has worked to back up each of the attributes with Carrier consolidation is beginning to have a stabilizing impact on
technical standards, definitions and certifications to provide service Ethernet pricing, she says. Meanwhile, providers have been requiring
providers with the tools they need to create and deliver Ethernet with longer terms or keeping customers at their legacy rates while upping
the service guarantees enterprises require and have come to expect their bandwidth using Ethernet. With SLAs, the revenue potential
for Ethernet grows. Being able to
measure quality in and of itself can
Carrier Ethernet Defined be monetized, but it also encourages
Five attributes distinguish carrier Ethernet from familiar enterprises to entrust more of their
LAN-based Ethernet: converged applications to Ethernet.
“Apart from educating customers,
1. Standardized Services
service providers must gain the trust of
• E-Line, E-LAN provide transparent, private line, virtual
legacy users by initially providing them
private line and LAN services
with Ethernet Internet access services,”
• A ubiquitous service providing globally and locally via
says Zeppetella. “Once customers are
standardized equipment comfortable with Ethernet access, they
• Requires no changes to customer LAN equipment or are more likely to upgrade to higher-
networks and accommodates existing network connectivity priced metro Ethernet point-to-point or
such as time-sensitive, TDM traffic and signaling multipoint services.”
• Ideally suited to converged voice, video and data networks Giving customers the ability to
• Wide choice and granularity of bandwidth and QoS options monitor SLAs directly or even to control
2. Scalability their bandwidth through a customer
• The ability for millions to use a network service that is ideal for the widest variety of business, network management application also
information, communications and entertainment applications with voice, video and data is expected to enhance Ethernet’s
• Spans access and metro to national and global services over a wide variety of physical appeal among enterprises and service
infrastructures implemented by a wide range of service providers providers’ margins (see related story,
“Customer Network Management Builds
• Scalability of bandwidth from 1mbps to 10gbps and beyond in granular increments
Satisfaction, Loyalty,” on Page 12).
3. Reliability
“From an enterprise perspective,
• The ability for the network to detect and recover from incidents without impacting users
one of the biggest pain points in the
• Meeting the most demanding quality and availability requirements
legacy infrastructure as you move
• Rapid recovery time when problems do occur, as low as 50ms from T1s to T3s to OC12s was that
4. Quality of Service it took a long time – 60 to 90 days
• Wide choice of granularity of bandwidth and QoS options – to upgrade,” says Umesh Kukreja,
• SLAs that deliver end-to-end performance matching the requirements for voice over converged director of product marketing for
business and residential networks Ethernet gear vendor Atrica Inc.,
• Provisioning via SLAs that provide end-to-end performance based on commited information rate noting that CNM offers customers
(CIR), frame loss, delay and variation characteristics the ability to upgrade bandwidth on
5. Service Management demand with a level of granularity
• The ability to monitor, diagnose and centrally manage the network using standards-based unavailable with other technologies
vendor independent implementations and it gives them more control over
• Carrier-class OAM applications they deploy. “It’s on the
road map of almost every service
• Rapid service provisioning
Source: Metro Ethernet Forum provider worldwide.”

www.xchangemag.com/ebooks November 2006 | 7

Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

Special
Delivery
Kevin Curran, senior vice president of marketing for
Optimum Lightpath, also says SLAs are important in
overcoming the notion that carrier Ethernet is best effort.
The service-assurance mandate is getting a major
boost this fall as the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF)
Stronger SLAs Drive begins the pilot phase of its MEF 14 certification for
service providers in late November (see inset article,
“MEF to Certify Network Service Quality,” on Page 9).
Ethernet Adoption While MEF 14 does not prescribe SLAs, it offers
tools with which to build them. There are typical
measures that make up SLAs, of course. Optimum
Lightpath, for example, looks at four metrics, including
availability (99.99 percent), latency (10ms roundtrip),
By Khali Henderson packet delivery (99.5 percent) and jitter (1ms). These can
be differentiated based on the type of application and/or
the architecture. Cox Business Services, for instance,
creates SLAs to match its architecture. So, Ethernet
over coaxial cable delivers 99.9 percent availability
while single-entrance Ethernet over SONET is 99.99
percent and dual-entrance Ethernet over SONET is
99.999 percent.
The service-assurance discipline is being defined
largely by several emerging operations, administration
and management standards. One of these is Ethernet in
the First Mile (EFM) OAM, which is included in the IEEE
In life there are no guarantees, 802.3ah specification. “So, what we have seen over the
but in communications networks, customers sure last two years is ... a very slow move by service providers to adopt EFM
want ‘em. Being able to satisfy that desire is what’s OAM standards,” says Bob Mandeville, president of Iometrix, the testing
ultimately going to drive carrier Ethernet services demand. While lab that works with the MEF to certify vendors and service providers
early adopters have been contented with best-effort Internet at against MEF standards. “And what we have also seen is, in the last six
Ethernet’s low price point, in the end, it’s uptime and QoS that months, a sudden, very strong movement of adoption of EFM OAM
is going to ensure Ethernet’s ubiquity as a converged services standards both by the vendor community and the service provider
platform, experts say. community.”
“As we go from the early adopters to the mass market, it’s all EFM OAM is a set of network management functions that provide
about getting frame relay, ATM and private line customers to switch for network fault and performance monitoring, diagnostics and fault
to Ethernet. One thing that is holding them back now is SLAs,” says isolation to enable carriers to monitor, diagnose and troubleshoot
Fred Ellefson, vice president of Etherjack alliances, with ADVA Optical Ethernet services. It addresses OAM on a link or access basis and
Networking. “The early adopters were just looking for cheap, dumb commonly is used between the customer premises and the next hop.
pipes and the best cost per bit. Best-effort for them was just fine. The The goal, however, is to achieve end-to-end OAM. There are standards in
mass market is looking for the same kind of carrier grade and the the works that address Ethernet OAM on an end-to-end basis, including
same kind of quality as traditional services.” the IEEE’s 802.1ag Connectivity Fault Management and 802.1aj Two-Port
Service providers’ experiences corroborate this statement. “From Media Access Control Relay as well as the ITU-T’s Y.1731 ETHOAM.
Verizon’s perspective, probably the biggest thing that we did to MEF supports the efforts to pick up where 802.3ah leaves off. It is
accelerate the growth of our program was when we implemented addressing EFM OAM implementation in a pending straw ballot called
stringent SLAs,” says Mike Tighe, director of strategy for Verizon User Network Interface Type 2 Implementation Agreement, which was
Communications Inc. “That sent a very strong signal and a very strong expected to be approved at the MEF’s Oct. 31 meeting.
message to our customers about the type of service that we were IEEE’s 802.1ag specifies capabilities for detecting, verifying and
offering, that it was a carrier-class service.” isolating connectivity failures within Ethernet networks that bridge

8 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

customer and provider domains. The ITU-T’s Y.1731 builds on support for 802.1ag for service verification and 802.3ah for link-layer
802.1ag by adding performance-monitoring features and is being troubleshooting. The new OAM features are included in the Cisco
developed in close collaboration with the IEEE’s 802.1 work group 7600 Series Routers, Metro Ethernet (ME) 3400 Series Ethernet
to ensure consistency. 802.1aj, which is the least-developed of the Access Switches, 3750 Metro Series switches and Integrated Services
recommendations, addresses Ethernet demarcation devices, which Router (ISR).
help carriers determine where network problems exist and provide “We have talked with customers and analysts and one thing
separation between the carrier’s WAN and the customer’s LANs. that’s holding [Ethernet] back is a lack of confidence that it can
Another one, 802.1ah, addresses scalability, allowing the present be managed like frame relay and ATM. This [OAM enhancement]
limit of 4,095 simultaneous VLANs to go up to 16 million. really knocks down that obstacle,” says Mike Capuano, senior
Already, many vendors are incorporating these standards into marketing manager for Cisco.
their equipment. Similarly, this summer at GLOBALCOMM, ADVA Optical
Cisco Systems Inc., for example, announced in late September Networking announced its Etherjack Service Assurance (ESA)
improvements to its carrier Ethernet OAM capabilities, including feature, which uses emerging IEEE 802.3ah, 802.1ag and ITU Y.1731

MEF to Certify Network Service Quality

By Khali Henderson
The service-assurance mandate is getting a major boost this fall capabilities. The certification really says to the market and to
as the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) begins the pilot phase of its MEF enterprises that service providers and equipment providers are
14 certification for service providers in late November. very confident in their abilities to support applications that have
“That is a huge step forward for the MEF,” says Bob Mandeville, the most stringent requirements, and we’re willing to get certified
president of Iometrix, the testing lab that works with the MEF to to show the market that we are confident in Ethernet’s capabilities.
certify vendors and service providers against MEF standards. “Now, I think it’s a big step forward.”
from a technical point of view, one of the innovations that the MEF Tighe says while MEF 14 does not prescribe SLAs to service
is bringing to the marketplace is the definition of metrics that allow providers, it offers them a framework and baseline metrics to
the verification of service quality for converged networks and offer an SLA. “It’s kind of a toolkit that allows service providers to
converged applications.” implement their own SLAs to differentiate their services but does
The number and names of the carriers participating in the allow for consistency in the market, so that when an enterprise user
pilot phase were not disclosed, but Mandeville says certified looks at an SLA from one provider to another, they are looking at the
providers are expected to be named in first quarter 2007. same types of variables being measured,” he says.
Already, MEF has certified system vendors’ equipment against The MEF technical committee makes a distinction between
the standard, but Mandeville says service-level specifications and
while the criteria are the same, the SLAs. Service-level specifications
instrumentation for measuring it “One of the innovations that the are technical, and unlike SLAs,
has been developed specifically MEF is bringing to the marketplace they have no legal implications.
for service provider networks. “From a purely technical point of
MEF Chairman Mike Tighe is the definition of metrics that view, a service-level specification
says MEF 14 is important to comprises the definition of the
allow the verification of service
enterprise users because part of metrics that the MEF technical
their motivation to implement quality for converged networks and committee has defined for carrier
Ethernet services is to support Ethernet and a way of comparing
converged services. “As carrier converged applications.” those metrics to objectives.
Ethernet has matured, the ability — Iometrix’s Bob Mandeville It’s that, that the certification
to support classes of service and program will be using,” explains
... converged applications has Mandeville.
become more and more important,” he says. “MEF 14 defines The metrics will be released publicly when the first service
how we will support converged services through class-of-service provider specifications are announced next year, he adds.

www.xchangemag.com/ebooks November 2006 | 9

Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

standards to allow service providers to monitor and verify Ethernet “We are continuing to see strong uptake of our Ethernet services,
SLAs when using ADVA’s FSP 150 product family. and one of the key reasons is that we have put in place an
In September, ADVA enhanced those capabilities through a infrastructure that enables us to offer Ethernet SLAs as stringent as
global partnership with InfoVista, wherein InfoVista’s performance- those offered with traditional services,” says Brendan Park, Uecomm’s
management solution, VistaInsight for Networks, takes data from the director of strategy, in a press statement about the implementation.
ADVA FSP 150 equipment and provides carriers information on key “More and more businesses recognize the unprecedented value of
performance indicators (KPI), such as frame delay, frame delay variation, Ethernet-based business services, and the ability to offer and assure
frame loss and network availability end-to-end across services. KPIs can Ethernet SLAs enables them to migrate.”
be provided hierarchically by service type, customer location, device Optimum Lightpath takes a similar approach. It uses gear
type and interface. The information also can be provided to end-user from Atrica Inc., which also sends information to the InfoVista
tool, allowing it to create service-level reports on
availability, jitter and latency.
Atrica’s ASPEN network management system
adds another dimension to the provision of SLAs,
according to Cox Business Services executives.
“ASPEN helps protect us from ourselves,” says
Craig Dassner, senior engineer for Cox Omaha. He
notes that ASPEN will not allow Cox to change a
customer’s bandwidth profile if it adversely affects
SLAs or QoS levels. ASPEN, he adds, ensures that
SLA commitments built into the Atrica platform
are kept.
QoS dropped fr “We are able to leverage the carrier-class products
om and the MEF definitions and combine the SLA
the top of the lis
t of protection and provisioning mechanisms to allow
technical challeng a service provider to come up with a guaranteed
es last
year to No. 7 th Ethernet service offering [and] a best-effort Ethernet
is year. service offering,” says Umesh Kukreja, director
— Infonetics Re of product marketing for Atrica. What’s more, he
search
says, is that Atrica allows a service provider to first
offer a customer a best-effort service and, later, as
its applications change (the addition of VoIP, for
example) and require more guarantees, the carrier
can provision the more stringent service without
changing out the gear.
“In an alternate architecture, you would have to
provision a new platform – maybe bring in a SONET
architecture or overprovision the network and
hope that that packet goes through,” he explains.
With Atrica’s platform, the service provider can
change the mix of excess information rate (EIR) and
customers through a Web portal (see related story, “Customer Network committed information rate (CIR) traffic on any single circuit without
Management Builds Satisfaction, Loyalty,” on Page 12). the addition of another box or card.
“Our partnership with InfoVista is very focused on making Ethernet “[ASPEN] allows service providers to provision the service very
kind of a business-grade Ethernet and very similar to frame relay, quickly. Instead of a point-by-point, node-by-node service provisioning,
private line and ATM,” says ADVA’s Ellefson. “With the InfoVista/ADVA our customers can point and click and basically provision the CIR [and]
solution, we are providing a very comparable set of tools to what they EIR protection levels and whatever categories they have productized ...
have today in the frame relay world.” in one shot,” he says.
The ADVA-InfoVista partnership came as the result of a joint Since manufacturers have added many new QoS features based
customer, Uecomm Ltd., an Australian carrier offering high-speed on OAM standards, end-to-end QoS has been improved dramatically,
broadband data solutions over its fiber-optic network. Ellefson said says Michael Howard, principal analyst for Infonetics Research. Inc.,
while they like the capability of the Etherjack demarc equipment, they citing research published in mid-October. “Now that the No. 1 technical
wanted to be able to extract the information and make it reportable issue that was plaguing service providers rolling out metro Ethernet
to their end customers. Uecomm also was working with InfoVista and networks last year – QoS – is being addressed by manufacturers, the
introduced the two companies to each other. Ethernet adoption curve is speeding up,” he says.

10 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

 Targeting
the SMB Set

SMB Carrier Ethernet

By Paula Bernier

S ervice providers targeting the SMB market now have an

important new tool at their disposal in the form of carrier
Ethernet. In addition to being based on Ethernet, which because of
technology for which the service provider would need to dedicate
the entire bandwidth of the link for storage − just a portion of the
Ethernet link could be used for that or another application.
its ubiquity can translate into lower costs for both service provider The SMB space is a target market for Optimum Lightpath, a wholly
and business customer, carrier Ethernet is ideal for the SMB space owned subsidiary of cable TV company Cablevision. The company sells
because it allows customers to up their bandwidth quickly and both fiber-based carrier Ethernet services and a service called Remote
incrementally as they require. E-Link, which is terminated over HFC to reach remote offices. Kevin
Of course, the first iteration of carrier Ethernet was fiber-based Curran, senior vice president of marketing, says the company has seen
only, so it was limited to the about 10 percent of businesses with direct more than 150 percent growth in its Ethernet revenue, and that about
fiber access. It’s notable to mention that many SMBs reside in MTUs a third of customers for those services have less than 30 employees.
alongside large enterprises, but clearly the SMB carrier Ethernet market He says most of those SMBs are service-oriented businesses, such as
cannot live on fiber alone, so some service providers with a cable accounting firms, architectural firms, ad agencies and the like. He adds
connection are using HFC to reach out to those SMBs that aren’t in high that the company is signing on about 40 new SMBs per month.
rises in major metro areas. At the same time, Ethernet over copper is The company’s No. 1 product is the Internet/Voice Bundle and the
now a possibility for some SMBs in areas like suburban office parks and most popular version of that offering is the package with 10mbps data
other outlying areas. and 50,000 minutes of voice, which sells for $2,500 per month, he says.
As you know, today, much of the SMB market uses T1 connections However, customers can elect to have connectivity as high as 300mbps
over which to communicate. But such dedicated solutions lock in SMBs and as many as 1 million minutes per month. The bundles include POTS
that want to scale up their bandwidth, because it rarely makes sense to along with a variety of advanced calling features, numbers and more.
go from a 1.5mbps T1 connection up to a 45mbps DS3 connection − the Curran adds that Optimum Lightpath also offers circuit emulation
next higher option. Ethernet, meanwhile, enables customers to increase as part of its service so SMBs don’t need to buy new gear to migrate
their bandwidth incrementally, as their demands dictate. to carrier Ethernet. And Optimum Lightpath decided to sell its carrier
That’s why about 1 million businesses over the next five years are Ethernet-based services in flat-rate packages to make the monthly spend
expected to move from T1 legacy services to Ethernet services, which predictable for SMBs.
will total more than $8 billion annually in U.S. service revenue, according Cox Business Services also sells to the SMB set. Omaha Public
to Gary Bolton, vice president of marketing and product management at School Systems was the first customer on the company’s carrier
Hatteras Networks. A key part of this opportunity is the “mid-band sweet Ethernet service. Of the school system’s 96 locations, 65 of them had
spot,” for copper-based Ethernet services that can run $500 to $2,000 for less than a 6mbps requirement and 18 had a 20mbps-plus requirement,
2mbps to 20mbps, he says. so Cox’s challenge was to deliver one affordable platform to support all
Whatever the physical access situation, Umesh Kukreja, director the high-and low-speed connections they required, says Craig Dassner,
of marketing at vendor Atrica Inc., says carrier Ethernet provides senior engineer with Cox Omaha. Carrier Ethernet allowed it to do that
competitive service providers with a unique opportunity to target the over a combination of fiber and coax infrastructure.
SMB group with a variety of voice services and data applications. Cox Omaha also has various other school systems on its Ethernet
Because carrier Ethernet has bandwidth guarantees, service providers services, but to date, this academic vertical is the only one it has
have the option of taking a business’s existing data and TDM-based attacked in a significant way with carrier Ethernet. Dassner says
voice traffic, which may today run over separate T1s, and combining that’s because SMBs need to be educated on the benefits of Ethernet
it on an Ethernet − or migrating that business to VoIP, employing a service. “The medium-sized and small business space at this point is so
committed information rate for that delay-sensitive traffic, Kukreja says. immature as it is related to Ethernet services, I don’t think they have the
“From a service provider perspective, it’s a unique bundling awareness that these types of services are available at the cost points
opportunity for developing SMB applications,” he adds. Because with they can afford,” he says.
Ethernet, “you can now create a combination of voice applications, But Cox is working to remedy that. “We don’t have a frame relay product,
data applications and storage applications.” He explains that storage so there’s a lot of greenfield opportunity for us to offer alternate Layer 2
nicely fits into the carrier Ethernet model because − unlike with WDM transport and [evangelize the] benefits of carrier Ethernet,” he says.

www.xchangemag.com/ebooks November 2006 | 11

Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

Customer Network Management

Builds Satisfaction, Loyalty
By Paula Bernier

W e’ve all had the experience of sitting at a restaurant waiting for

service that never seems to come. It’s frustrating, to say the least,
because you have so little control of the situation and you have to wait,
which nobody enjoys. Sometimes you might just leave the restaurant
without eating. But a salad bar or a buffet can be much more satisfying
This can allow the business to see how much bandwidth is available
on each circuit, and change the bandwidth, if desired. An open API within
CNM enables the interface to be customized to the user’s specifications
and can be partitioned for different divisions of the enterprise.
“CNM is a feature that everybody talks about, but there are no
because you help yourself to what you want when you want it. particular standards,” says Kukreja. Some vendors offer CNM solutions
Before you make a run for the fridge, let me explain that I’m drawing that allow customers to view their bills online, but the Atrica solution
an analogy here to the telecom market. Wouldn’t it be great if, rather than actually allows customers to order and alter their services, he says.
keeping business customers in hands-off mode waiting for their services While every service provider that employs Atrica’s carrier Ethernet
you could outfit them with the tools to order, and solution uses ASPEN, the extent to which
receive, services as they need them? That way, those providers offer CNM varies, says Kukreja,
they have more control, you save money on the adding that CNM is on the road map of every
order-taking process, and everybody wins. service provider delivering carrier Ethernet
That’s just beginning to happen with Being able to scale services today.
customer network management (CNM) tools Cisco Systems Inc. addresses CNM
related to carrier Ethernet services.
Being able to scale services as demand
services as demand through what it calls its Service Exchange
Framework, a collection of products that
requires is one of the key pain points for manage the network intelligently, explains
enterprise customers, says Umesh Kukreja, requires is one of Mike Capuano, senior marketing manager
director of marketing at carrier Ethernet in Cisco’s service provider solutions. The
equipment vendor Atrica Inc. But putting
control in the customers’ hands so they easily
the key pain points framework consists of a service called the
Broadband Policy Manager; and the Service
can access flexible, affordable services that
meet their needs as those needs arise can help
for enterprise Control Engine, which does application-
level inspection and some other functions.
service providers offer tiered services and lower Capuano says the solution basically leverages
customer churn, because customers tend to be customers. the policy server that includes a Web portal,
more loyal to providers that offer them more and that the Web portal often is created by
control and more than one service, he says. the service provider. The policy server then
The Atrica Service Platform for Ethernet controls the network equipment. “So the
Networks, better known as ASPEN, is an customer could go from 2meg to 10meg
integrated service provisioning and management system that offers that each night for data center backup” for example, he says. “The policy
kind of control, he says. “We have built up a system where you can have server would trigger that via the portal, and send instructions to the
point-and-click at the ends [of the selected circuit], say how much is CIR, network elements.”
how much EIR, how much is protected, and you just built the primary But Kukreja adds that some solutions from Layer 1 and 2 infrastructure
path as well as the protection path, so the provisioning is extremely providers require provisioning on a node-by-node basis, requiring a higher
simple,” Kukreja says. level of skill to do the job than the Atrica point-and-click solution requires.
Once the circuit is established, an application called Customer Brian Van Steen, Alcatel’s director of Ethernet solutions marketing,
Network Management, which is built on top of ASPEN, allows the adds that products are widely available today to support portals where
enterprise to look at its part of the network via a Web-based interface. customers can tune the bandwidth and look at what services they have.

12 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

But offering customers control of their services is more complex than ability to manipulate virtual circuits within their Ethernet connection.
just buying these tools, he says, because service providers need to tie In the second quarter, Optimum Lightpath aims also to allow
such systems into their OSS/BSS systems and processes. “The billing customers to use a Web portal to change the bandwidth of their
system must be upgraded to see a customer’s upgraded bandwidth,” entire circuit as well as to alter burstable rates based on time or day
he says. “Also, if a customer is paying $100 a megabit for service, if or week, says Curran, adding that the changes would be made in the
they upgrade to 15meg, is it still a $100-a-megabit charge or network almost immediately after the business customer
is it treated as a burstable, short-term increment?” Service input the data.
providers need to map out these complex business
issues before they jump into offering customer control
of carrier Ethernet, he says.
There’s also a question as to what constitutes “real-
time” ordering and provisioning, he says. In any case,
however, historically it has taken about three months
to get a T1 provisioned, so if the service provider can
shorten that, it’s a good thing, he says.
While it’s certainly very early days for customer-
controlled networking, some service providers
are doing it today.
“It’s definitely a competitive differentiator,”
agrees Van Steen. “It’s a service that enterprises
are aware of and would like to utilize.”
For example, Masergy Communications has
been a pioneer in the area of customer control
through what it calls its Service Control Center.
Cox Business Services, meanwhile, is
in the process of developing a customer
control capability, says Craig Dassner, senior
engineer with Cox Omaha.
“We wanted to get carrier Ethernet out
there fast,” he says. “Cox in Omaha was
one of the first to deploy the Atrica platform
within Cox. One of the commitments we
made to one of our large customers −
a school system − is to give them that
management. But they were willing to
deploy carrier Ethernet knowing this
would come later. Cox Omaha was
going to develop that capability with a
homegrown tool, but then our other
markets − like Phoenix − are going
to Atrica. So now we’re building [the
appropriate tie-ins to] that CNM tool
so all Cox markets can use it.”
Optimum Lightpath, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Cablevision
Systems Corp. that offers business
services, also is planning to offer
customer network management
in the near future, says Kevin
Curran, the company’s senior
vice president of marketing.
Starting in the first
quarter, the company plans
to offer its customers the

www.xchangemag.com/ebooks November 2006 | 13

Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

New Frontiers for Ethernet

By Tara Seals

if a company needs more than an OC48 can provide, it must go to

Competitive carriers in the Wild West of an OC192. But Ethernet is not limited to the SONET equivalent, and
enterprise services are finding subscribers are continuing to seek typically can scale in any increment between 10mbps and 1gbps. That
higher-speed, IP-based applications. For providers wanting to meet this eliminates the costly problem of over-provisioning. “If you have excess
growing enterprise need, Ethernet represents something of an open capacity you’re not using, that’s a waste of good money,” says Tim
range for those who can take advantage of it. With an improved cost Dunne, vice president of business operations at Nextlink Wireless Inc.,
structure and benefits for end users unmatched by legacy technology, which offers wireless metro Ethernet services.
Ethernet allows these operators to remain nimble, customizing Meanwhile, enterprises across the spectrum want to connect
transport services to specific applications. Incumbent carriers relying multiple sites over cost-effective, scalable, point-to-point, point-
on SONET and ATM may have a difficult time installing barbed wire to to-multipoint internal networks, to enable those mission-critical
curb the opportunity. applications. Those include LAN connectivity, PBX interconnection,
Ethernet also is overcoming a historical challenge: availability. VoIP, conferencing, disaster recovery, distributed computing and
Typically run over metro fiber-optic links, Ethernet’s adoption among converged applications, e-commerce, help desk support, remote
enterprises has been constrained by the fact that fiber is available mirroring and failover, wireless backhaul and access as well as
only to 11.7 percent of commercial U.S. buildings with 20 or more applications like ERP, CRM, supply chain management and others.
employees, according to March 2006 Ethernet services also provide
data from Vertical Systems Group Inc. management advantages. In the
However, Ethernet also can be run enterprise, 98 percent of telecom
over wireless links, cable networks
and other nontraditional access
For providers traffic starts and ends with Ethernet-
based LANs. By building WAN
methodologies, providing service to a
greater coverage area.
wanting to meet transport on Ethernet, nodes appear
local to the network, so the WAN
“Cablecos and wireless players
are the perfect candidates to leverage
this growing becomes easier to manage.
Because of all these factors,
this service,” says Atrica Inc.’s Umesh
Kukreja, director of product marketing.
enterprise need, competitive carriers, in particular,
are well-positioned to meet the
“It’s a better way to use their networks Ethernet represents pent-up service demand by creating
to differentiate service and capture the differentiated Ethernet-based services
business market away from the LECs.” something of an to compete effectively with the
For such service providers, established players in the marketplace
Ethernet provides a way to deliver open range for that have legacy platforms and legacy
service quality, reliability and flexible service provisioning methodologies.
bandwidth allocation at a lower those who can The best part of the proposition is the
cost than more traditional transport cost, says Atrica’s Kukreja.
mechanisms. That makes tapping the take advantage of it. “If I build an OC48 ring in the metro
market for enhanced business services and go to four locations delivering
an attractive one. For starters, service four or five megs to each, 75 percent
quality is incorporated by the MEF as of my capacity is gone and I have to
part of the standards governing the service, verifiable through stringent upgrade to an OC192 to avoid a bottleneck,” he notes. “With Ethernet,
certification programs (see related story, "Special Delivery," on Page I can build a four- or five-node core network with 150 gigabytes of
8). That makes it an appropriate transport mechanism for carriers to capacity. That’s enough to build up 140 sites, gain ROI over two years,
provide multiservice networks to enterprises and wholesale customers. and if you have a four-year contract you’re looking at a 40 or 50 percent
Also, Ethernet’s ability to scale incrementally is a differentiator for margin. If you want to add on, it’s a matter of investing per site to
providers. SONET-based networks allow service providers to deliver connect it to the network. So, the economics of delivering service are
bandwidth to customers only in established increments. For instance, much better.”

14 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks

t

BEFORE B ac k h a u l
Typical Backhaul, Challenged to Scale Economically
to Address 3G/4G Growth
Bargains

The backhaul market is another emerging opportunity for

The challenge: A mostly TDM-based backhaul today that was designed for low-bandwidth Ethernet and its ability to differentiate different levels of traffic.
mobile voice
For instance, “a cable operator needs to aggregate backhaul from
• Not easily scalable to address 3G and 4G IP/data/video growth
• High cost (opex leased lines)
the headends, to hand off to the PSTN,” says Atrica Inc.’s Umesh
Kukreja, director of product marketing. “Video traffic is all Ethernet.
They use gigE inside the network, which requires extremely low
AFTER latency and jitter. You also need some guarantee for voice. Internet
Nortel MEN Carrier Ethernet Backhaul Solutions
access at the aggregation level needs some guarantees, and some
Address the Challenge
best-effort. It’s shared amongst the packets. So, you have a single
network used to backhaul different traffic with different SLAs.”
In the wireless backhaul arena, advanced services like video,
pictures and other traffic is driving ever more bandwidth. “A lot of
wireless infrastructure is designed around low-bandwidth voice,”
says Errol Binda, product marketing manager at Nortel Networks
Ltd. “The problem as they move to 3G and beyond is that more
bandwidth will be required to support these new applications.”
Right now, he says, most cellcos lease T1s from the LECs for
backhaul, which costs around $400 per month per T1. “So doubling
or tripling capacity with T1s is not economical, and this is forcing
them globally to look at alternatives to do the megabytes needed to
move to a high-capacity infrastructure, and that’s where Ethernet in
• Consolidate both voice and data services over a common backhaul, reducing costs in the short the metro environment becomes handy.”
and long term
• Provides highly scalable, Ethernet-based access that can accommodate both current and future Kukreja says base stations increasingly are being equipped
traffic demands such as 4G with T1s, E1s and Ethernet ports together. “As traffic migrates to
• Deliver predictable service quality and assurance for emerging mobile IMS and multimedia applications
IP, bandwidth requirements increase, and operators can upgrade
Source: Nortel Networks
the bandwidth available and CRI available as needed,” he says.
“So, instead of having a T1-based network, if you have fiber, you
can deliver 100 megabytes to a port, or transport T1s via circuit
emulation.”

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Carrier Ethernet: Taking Care of Business

Five Questions With

Atrica’s Umesh Kukreja
Atrica Inc. is a pioneer in the area of carrier Ethernet. The company prides itself on the
flexibility and simplicity of its end-to-end carrier Ethernet solution. Umesh Kukreja, director of
marketing at Atrica, recently spoke with xchange about trends in carrier Ethernet and what
Atrica is doing to help service providers and their customers leverage its benefits.

XC: Who is Atrica? and other non-mission-critical activities, and they’re setting very strict
UK: Atrica was the first company to define the vision for carrier Ethernet, SLAs in terms of how the services are going to be managed.
and the first company to deliver carrier Ethernet solutions to the market. In addition, dispersed servers are being centralized into key locations.
We started with a vision of leveraging the cost points and economics This is driving the demand for more bandwidth and applications between
of Ethernet technology and bringing its power and advantages to the multiple locations such as voice over IP, LAN traffic and storage services.
service provider environment. To Ethernet we added traffic engineering Given all these factors, for service providers, it’s a great opportunity to
and service management capabilities, such as the ability to support become more of a partner to their customers by offering managed and
service level agreements (SLAs) in a highly resilient carrier environment. resilient carrier Ethernet services.
We have also made sure carriers can integrate the solutions with their
existing SDH, WDM and core routing infrastructures. XC: Who are the major end-user adopters of carrier
Today, Ethernet interfaces have become ubiquitous. We believe that Ethernet today, and for what applications?
the Atrica vision has, in fact, become reality. UK: There are a number of major vertical markets that are driving the
growth of carrier Ethernet.
XC: What is carrier Ethernet? One of the leading adopters of Ethernet services is the education
UK: Carrier Ethernet incorporates five key elements. field. Both primary and higher education institutions are clamoring for
The first one is scalability. Carrier Ethernet overcomes the VLAN high-speed Ethernet services. With the launch of government initiatives
limitations of enterprise Ethernet platforms and scales Ethernet beyond to close the “digital divide” and ensure students have adequate
the scope of how it had been deployed in enterprise environments. access to online content, there have been increasing deployments of
Layer 2 Ethernet, coupled with MPLS, is the basis for going beyond the carrier Ethernet infrastructures. These are being used for applications
enterprise scalability issues. such as high-speed Internet, voice over IP, and tele-education. In
The second key element is protection and resiliency. Carrier Ethernet higher education, many universities are leveraging their state-of-the-art
leverages MPLS to deliver the 50msec protection required for the communications infrastructures to compete for student enrollment, to
delivery of mission-critical services. enable applications such as remote learning and tele-education, and to
The third element is the ability to support service level agreements. attract research expertise and advanced research programs.
To deliver mission-critical enterprise services, service providers must Two other interesting verticals are the financial and medical sectors.
be able to commit to and adhere to service level agreements. When Companies in each of these verticals have a lot of digital information
you are able to combine committed information rate (CIR) and excess that must be shared among numerous facilities − and that must be
information rate (EIR), you get into some really interesting applications. protected. Mission-critical, bandwidth-hungry storage area networks
The fourth element is TDM integration. For a long time, carriers were are key to these two verticals. In the medical vertical, hospitals are now
transporting Ethernet over a WDM or a TDM infrastructure. Today, because creating a lot of digital content in the form of X-rays and MRIs. They’re
Ethernet can support SLAs and timing integrity across the data network, also encouraging their doctors’ offices to be connected electronically
TDM is transported over Ethernet using circuit emulation services. for the rapid sharing of medical records. Some innovative medical
The fifth element is service management. Carrier-class service institutions are even building networks that allow them to keep in touch
management is a critical piece for service providers, as it not only allows with their patients. This approach optimizes the use of hospital beds and
them to do rapid service provisioning, it also reduces their ongoing reduces hospital stays.
operating expenses for things such as fault management, provisioning
and moves/adds/changes. And, it allows them to conduct seamless XC: What differentiates Atrica in the carrier
service upgrades. Ethernet marketplace?
UK: Our platform was specifically designed for the service provider
XC: What is really happening with the enterprise? environment, to enable the delivery of very flexible and scalable Ethernet
Why do they want to move to Ethernet? services in a very simple fashion. Our comprehensive Layer 2/MPLS
UK: In many enterprises, the IT team is no longer just a peripheral product suite encompasses devices for the metro core, metro aggregation,
department. Today, IT departments have become mission-critical and metro edge, as well as the demarcation point.
elements to their enterprise’s success. They are at the core of enterprise, Another differentiator for us is ASPEN, our state-of-the-art network
managing Oracle servers, e-mail servers and other application servers. management system. ASPEN enables rapid service provisioning,
However, the number of people working in IT organizations has comprehensive network, performance and fault management, and
decreased. So, IT groups are increasingly outsourcing the WAN service seamless integration with existing applications.

16 | November 2006 www.xchangemag.com/ebooks