RAD Data Communications today introduced the ETX-204A, a Carrier Ethernet demarcation device that delivers SLA-based Layer 2 and Layer 3 business services to the customer premises over native Ethernet access. It provides delineation between the user network and the transport network for those services, as well as for mobile backhaul.
RAD, displaying the ETX-204A for the first time in North America, is in Booth #1517 at the Supercomm conference.
With extensive service delivery, performance monitoring, and service protection/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/SONET-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, ensuring simple and efficient traffic prioritization not only at the demarcation point, but across the network.
As a mobile backhaul transport gateway, it reduces backhaul costs by combining “smart demarcation” with network synchronization 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 its 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 SONET or SDH networks, the ETX-204A enables cellular providers and carriers whose transport networks are utilized by cellular providers to migrate multiple generations of mobile backhaul traffic to packet switched networks,” said Eitan Schwartz, RAD’s Vice President of Ethernet Access and Pseudowire. “In this migration, mobile operators and transport providers can ensure service continuity and eliminate service disruptions, impaired cell handoffs, and excessive dropped calls.”
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.
