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Hatteras Networks preps new ‘mix ‘n’ match’ mid-band Ethernet technology…
Later this year mid-band Ethernet pioneer Hatteras Networks will start trials of a new ‘mix ‘n’ match’ technology dubbed dynamic native application, or DNA. When fully commercialised in 2008 the technology should be of more than passing interest to service providers, including cell phone companies and their wholesale capacity suppliers, that need to transport or backhaul a mixture of traffic types, but can’t predict with any certainty what the future balance between traditional TDM and data will be, or when there might be a requirement to switch dedicated capacity from the former to the latter. The DNA solution, referred to as ‘Turn The Dial’, will allow capacity to be re-assigned among the different traffic flavours, with some key strokes, as required.
“What we’re developing now and will deliver later in the year is what we call dynamic native application, or DNA. The idea here is that the timing of the switchover from TDM to data traffic, particularly from the mobile backhaul perspective, is very difficult to determine – maybe impossible,” judges Hatteras Networks’ cto Matt Squire. “With dynamic native application what we are doing is taking our same mid-band Ethernet technology, the same bonding technology, to create a very large pipe, and we allow that pipe to be partitioned among traditional TDM services and Ethernet services. So you don’t have to worry about circuit emulation. You can deliver native TDM over that pipe. Over time you can take that same bandwidth and migrate to native Ethernet technology.”
As mid-band Ethernet moves from being an enterprise to an infrastructure service, cellular backhaul is forecast to become a significant component of the overall market for that technology, according to Hatteras taking potential equipment sales to some US$3.8bn by 2010.
And with that projected level of moolah around, the odds are that we can expect some mid-band Ethernet solution introductions from the traditional tier one telecoms vendors still active in the access space.
John Williamson
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