RICHARDSON, Texas -- Fujitsu Network Communications Inc., a leading supplier of IT and wireline/wireless networking solutions, announced today that Iometrix, an independent testing facility, has determined that two Fujitsu FLASHWAVE® 4000 products can deliver Ethernet Private Line (EPL), Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) and Ethernet LAN (E-LAN) services that are compliant with the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) 14 technical specification.

The field-proven FLASHWAVE 4500 platform and popular FLASHWAVE 4100 system were tested by the Iometrix test laboratory in accordance with the Iometrix Test Plan for Traffic Management as approved by the MEF Certification Committee, and have been certified to comply with the requirements established in the MEF 14 Abstract Test Suite for Traffic Management. These products were also previously certified to comply with the MEF 9 technical specification. With the addition of MEF 14 compliance, these platforms are able to support full compliance to critical Ethernet service requirements as defined by the MEF.

“Fujitsu has backed up the claim that we are market innovators by being one of the first vendors to prove that our products can deliver MEF 14 compliant Ethernet services,” said Bill Erickson, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Fujitsu Network Communications. “MEF 14 provides specific guidelines for Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, which is another major step towards making Ethernet services carrier-class. By successfully demonstrating MEF 14 compliance with our FLASHWAVE 4000 portfolio, we give our customers the flexibility they need to create exciting new Ethernet service offerings that support real-time and bandwidth-intensive business applications.”

MEF 14 provides clear specifications-based guidelines for the formulation of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and is a major step toward making Ethernet truly carrier-class. MEF 14 complements MEF 9 and covers “Service Performance” and “Bandwidth Profiles”—two sets of MEF service attributes. The first set encompasses three service performance attributes relating to Ethernet Virtual Circuits (EVC): Frame delay, Frame delay variation and frame loss ratio. The second set follows the familiar example of Frame Relay and includes four bandwidth profile attributes: Committed Information Rate (CIR), Committed Burst Size (CBS), Excess Information Rate (EIR), and Excess Burst Size (EBS). Together MEF 9 and MEF 14 cover the complete set of Carrier Ethernet service attributes defined in the core definitional technical document MEF 10.

“Now Carrier Ethernet is delivering its promises on Quality of Service in a standardized, independently verified manner,” explains Mark Whalley, co-chair of the MEF Marketing Committee. “For a service provider end-customer, MEF 14 certification means confidence that the equipment in the network is capable of providing tightly specified SLA behavior in terms of assured bandwidth and application responsiveness. With the explosion in VoIP usage and the promise of IPTV and other bandwidth hungry and delay-sensitive services, Carrier Ethernet must deliver Quality of Service to maintain its momentum as one of the fastest growing sectors in our industry.”

Fujitsu Network Communications Inc.