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ADTRAN Adds Ethernet with Timing to Mobile Backhaul Portfolio

SIP Trunking

Enterprise VoIP Featured Article

October 20, 2009

ADTRAN Adds Ethernet with Timing to Mobile Backhaul Portfolio

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC
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Mobile backhaul leader ADTRAN (News - Alert) Inc. now offers an Ethernet-based mobile backhaul solution, which leverages its popular Total Access 5000 multiservice access product and lesser-known MX408e pseudowire box.

 
The news entails the addition of a fiber-based carrier Ethernet capability for the Total Access 5000 paired with timing capabilities from ADTRAN’s existing MX408e product.
 
“We’re porting our timing over packet, our clock synchronization, our pseudowire solution, onto our TA 5000,” said Kurt Raaflaub, ADTRAN’s product manager for carrier Ethernet and optical products. “In other words, we’re taking it from our OPTI-6100 SONET-based platform – that’s where it’s been for the last several years – and we’ve now put it on to our carrier Ethernet platform, which is the TA 5000.”
 
ADTRAN introduced the Total Access 5000 in March of 2006. It was initially positioned and has seen a great deal of success as a broadband digital loop carrier system and IP DSLAM, focused primarily at the tier 2 and 3 marketplace, says Kevin Morgan (News - Alert), director of marketing for ADTRAN’s Carrier Networks Division.
 
One year later, ADTRAN introduced Ethernet over copper and TDM capabilities for the TA 5000. The company brought GPON to the product last year so it could support residential triple play services. Now it’s adding carrier Ethernet capability for mobile backhaul and business services to the TA 5000, which Morgan adds is an all-Ethernet platform designed for packet-based networks but also can support legacy services.
 
The ability to support both the old and the new is key given the move to an all IP-based network in which fiber access is widespread has been, and will continue to be, a gradual one.
 
Indeed, only 5 percent of business services today are Ethernet services, notes Raaflaub.
 
Similarly, wireless network operators have been cautious in their move to IP-based backhaul.
 
“There’s been some hesitation on the part of the mobile operators to migrate to all packet because they’re not comfortable yet with the way the synchronization is delivered over an Ethernet network,” Morgan said. 
 
However, as noted above, ADTRAN is addressing that synchronization issue with the mobile backhaul solution it’s introducing today.
 
“I’ve taken the same good, old-fashioned bit clock that’s in any central office and I’m transporting that quality clock and keeping that same quality over packet,” Raaflaub said. “And I’m sending that up the base station. And the base station is just fat, dumb and happy.  It thinks it’s getting the bits input directly from the CO. It doesn’t know the difference.”
 
With this solution, adds Raaflaub, there’s no requirement for special boxes that support next-generation timing over packet.
 
“I can punch through a robust packet timing implementation right through an existing IP or Ethernet box,” he said. “You need no changes on that box to make it work. This solution has been shipping for several years. All I’m really doing is I’m porting that technology onto our carrier Ethernet-based platform, which is the TotalAccess 5000.”
 
In this mobile backhaul scenario, the TA 5000 interfaces with a NetVanta 8044 Ethernet access device at the cell site.



Edited by Michael Dinan


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