RAD Provides Ethernet Solution for Southern California Wireless ISPInexpensive Circuit Converters Prove Better Choice than Large, Costly General-Purpose Routers August 22, 2005: Color Broadband has grown into a top provider of data, voice, and wireless networking services in Southern California by being nimble. Not wanting to be tied down by unwieldy networking gear, it chose equipment from RAD Data Communications to pump high-volume Ethernet traffic through its wide area network. The company, which began as a regional Internet Service Provider, has quickly expanded services to include wireless Internet, international voice trunks, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) transport, and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Its strategy has paid off, making it the Los Angeles area's largest wireless Internet service provider. Saddled by what Tom Luckett, Color Broadband's director of network operations, described as "700 pounds of steel," the company had been using two general-purpose routers to transport Ethernet traffic over a SONET T3 (45 Mbps) link. "Using those devices to terminate a single T3 was a bit ridiculous," Luckett said. "For our capacity requirements, it was overkill. We didn’t need $12,000 worth of equipment at each end to perform this function. Plus, we weren’t interested in dealing with the devices' physical size, power requirements, heat output, and ongoing maintenance costs." Pulse Inc., a RAD system integration partner, recommended RAD's RICi-T3 Ethernet-over-T3 circuit converter instead. It has all the elements that Color Broadband was looking for – it is small, with low power consumption and heat output, and it is a fraction of the cost of the big routers that had been in place. The RICi-T3 features wire-speed throughput, which Color Broadband's old routers did not. In addition, it offers Quality of Service differentiation, Virtual LAN stacking, in-band and remote management capabilities, and fault propagation. With the RICi-T3, Color Broadband can transport customer Ethernet traffic over a T3 link as well as aggregate and backhaul that traffic to a central office switch in Long Beach. Color Broadband's network infrastructure runs east from Santa Monica to Monterey Park, and as far south as the city of Irvine. Its wireless coverage area takes in more than 1,500 square miles.
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