Mobile backhaul demarcation device targets Carrier Ethernet/MPLS, small cell applications

Telco Systems has unveiled its T-Marc 3312SC mobile backhaul Carrier Ethernet/MPLS demarcation device, designed to pack high density in a small size and bring the benefits of Carrier Ethernet and MPLS to small cell mobile backhaul applications.

According to the company, the T-Marc 3312SC offers non-blocking 12x1G ports and 8xE1/T1 Circuit Emulation Services (CES) ports for TDM over Ethernet in 1RU by half-shelf width. It supports extending core IP/MPLS capabilities to the cell site, enabling carriers to enjoy the scalability, resiliency, traffic engineering, and ease of third-party integration and interoperability that MPLS as a transport technology can provide. The demarcation device also comes with the Telco Systems’ BiNOX operating system, and supports hierarchal QoS (HQoS), a variety of resiliency protocols, and high service scalability, according to the company.

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“Mobile network operators are facing significant backhaul challenges as they transition their networks to support skyrocketing data growth from 4G/LTE,” said Ron Kline, principal analyst, network infrastructure at market research and consultancy firm Ovum. “At minimum, operators are demanding that backhaul equipment support the full spectrum of MEF-compliant Ethernet services along with easy to use service assurance, proactive performance monitoring, and SLA management features.”

The T-Marc 3312SC supports a range of hardware-based OAM approaches, including IEEE 802.1ag Connectivity Fault Management (CFM), ITU-T Y.1731, IEEE 802.3ah, EFM-OAM, RFC 2544-based embedded test heads, and Y.1564. The company’s EtherSAM feature enables the service provider to monitor and test services end-to-end, helps identifying connectivity and performance issues, and isolates problems from a remote location, Telco Systems adds.

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The new device is also software-defined networks (SDN) friendly, as it supports such management protocols as NETCONF, which is mandatory to support OpenFlow. It is also integrated in the company’s service management system, EdgeGenie, to allow dynamic elastic service management and control plane separation.

“Our backhaul provider customers shared with us that their biggest concern is providing assured, secured, end-to-end mobile backhaul services with low latency and high scalability,” comments Nir Halachmi, mobile backhaul product line manager for Telco Systems. “T-Marc 3312SC, combined with our Ethernet/MPLS service aggregation solutions and EdgeGenie, our service management solution, allows our customers to build a cost-optimized, scalable MPLS and Ethernet service management solution that can be used for cloud based services, business services and optimized mobile backhaul networking.”

Several mobile backhaul providers are reportedly testing the T-Marc 3312SC, which Telco Systems expects to make generally available early in 2013.

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