Vitesse demos carrier Ethernet capability at EANTC multi-vendor hot staging event

MPLS & ETHERNET WORLD CONGRESS 2011, PARIS, FRANCE: Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., a leading provider of advanced IC solutions for Carrier and Enterprise networks, is participating in the multi-vendor interoperability event focused on advanced Ethernet functions, sponsored by the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) at the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress, February 8-11, 2011.

The staging will demonstrate IEEE 1588 for timing and clock synchronization over packet networks and Y.1731 flow-based Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM), and protection switching in an all-packet-based environment.

“Carriers who wish to transition from SONET or TDM to an all-Ethernet environment need confidence that SONET-equivalent protection switching and network synchronization can operate effectively in a multi-vendor environment,” said Carsten Rossenhoevel, managing director, EANTC. “The EANTC interoperability test is critical for giving both service providers and their hardware and software suppliers the confidence that interoperability is here and real.”

Having already proven device-level standards compliance, Vitesse’s Jaguar and Caracal switch engines are now demonstrated with OEM equipment to ensure system-level interoperability. This is essential to guaranteeing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) required by service providers. Vitesse is unique among semiconductor vendors in demonstrating such end-to-end interoperability with multi-vendor network infrastructure equipment.

“Vitesse sees service-aware guaranteed performance as critical for successful Carrier Ethernet deployments. Performance monitoring and synchronization are especially crucial as network speeds increase exponentially,” said Uday Mudoi, director of product marketing at Vitesse. “Participation in our second round of EANTC interoperability tests re-affirm that Vitesse’s Jaguar and Caracal solutions are highly suitable for Carrier access and mobile edge applications requiring support for advanced OAM, Ethernet protection, 1588 and Synchronous Ethernet.”

Vitesse’s family of Carrier Ethernet products are designed to meet the 21st-century Carrier demand for “service-aware architecture,” in which specific client traffic can be mapped to Carrier services, and given the appropriate traffic management and Quality of Service (QoS) treatment to make sure that service providers always comply with SLAs. As wireless operators join wireline carriers in end-to-end Ethernet support, these service-aware features become as important for mobile backhaul as they are for wireline broadband backbones.

TDM networks of the past offered guaranteed protection switching with sub-50-ms failover capabilities, as mandated in SONET and SDH. Native Ethernet designed for a LAN has no such reliability guarantees, nor is it synchronous, making the additional standards like 1588 and those for OAM a necessary element of a Carrier Ethernet strategy. The EANTC interoperability test, the ninth such event organized by the independent test lab, is focused on demonstrating such service-aware guaranteed performance.