ADVA Enhances FSP 150

CHICAGO -- ADVA Optical Networking today announced the expanded capabilities of its Etherjack-enabled FSP 150 product family with the introduction of its newest device, the FSP 150CCs. This additional product supports Ethernet services over both OC-3 and OC-12 connections and is intended to help carriers deliver more intelligent Ethernet services to more customers over a wider range of media. The device is being introduced in Booth #13026 during GLOBALCOMM 2006, June 5-7, at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Just like other devices in ADVA’s FSP 150 family, the FSP 150CCs incorporates the new Etherjack Service Assurance (ESA) feature. ESA enables carriers for the first time to offer, monitor and verify Ethernet service-level agreements (SLAs) across their own and leased infrastructures.

ADVA’s ESA feature is also designed to overcome one of the key barriers to mass-market rollout of managed Ethernet services: inadequate performance-monitoring capabilities. With ESA monitoring delay, delay variation, packet loss and network availability end–to-end across services on- and off-net, carriers can introduce Ethernet SLAs as exacting as those associated with Frame Relay and other legacy data services.

“Enabling service providers to offer SLAs will help remove one of the obstacles to customer migration from Frame Relay to Ethernet-based services,” said Erin Dunne, Director of Research with Vertical Systems Group. “Frame Relay was originally offered without SLAs, but the wide-scale deployment of ‘CSU/DSUs’ or ‘smartjacks’ allowed carriers to offer the service assurances that enterprises demand for their mission-critical applications.“

ADVA’s Etherjack Service Assurance, already deployed by carriers in North America and Asia, is a built-in feature of the FSP 150 solution, expressly designed for mass-market delivery of intelligent Ethernet services for the business market. Aligned with emerging IEEE 802.3ah, 802.1ag and ITU Y.1731 standards, the FSP 150 provides a rich set of Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) capabilities at both the link and service levels. Etherjack demarcation technology is combined with a wide range of standards-based transport technologies – fiber, Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), copper and Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/SDH) – to allow carriers to deliver Ethernet ubiquitously while utilizing existing infrastructure whenever possible. For example, the FSP 150 suite of products has been newly expanded with the introduction of a ninth device, supporting Ethernet services over OC-3/12 connections.

“Two goals guide all of our FSP 150 innovations,” said Brian P. McCann, ADVA’s chief marketing and strategy officer. “First, we are determined to give carriers more options for deploying a consistent Ethernet service over their own or leased infrastructure. Ethernet ubiquity is an important differentiator for carriers attempting to serve multi-site Ethernet customers with offices connected by different media and different speeds. Second, we are determined to develop solutions that help deliver more intelligent Ethernet services. Functionality such as in-service measurement of Ethernet SLAs, remote management and craft automation enables carriers to meet their enterprise customers’ high expectations for services supporting mission-critical applications.”

ADVA Optical Networking