JANUARY 27, 2009 -- Xelerated (search for Xelerated) has announced the AX family of programmable wire-speed Ethernet switches. The company asserts this is the first line of devices to enable network equipment vendors and carriers to use a unified Ethernet-based FTTx access device family for Active Ethernet, EPON, GPON, 10G PON, LTE, and WiMAX using a single design. This provides them with the highest flexibility solution at the lowest cost and accelerates return-on-investment, Xelerated says.
The AX family, a 100-Gbps-ready series based on Xelerated's patented dataflow architecture, is optimized to deliver IPTV and video-on-demand with very high quality. Fully programmable, the AX family is designed to enable easy adaptation to carrier requirements and new access standards, such as DSL Forum WT-201 (TR101) and WT-145. It also enables carriers and vendors to extend the lifetime of access equipment from three to five years to more than 20 years and to accelerate time to market for new, revenue-generating services, Xelerated adds. These features ultimately allow carriers and NEVs to obtain a faster return on investment while increasing vendor interoperability -- a major challenge in the fiber access market today, in the company's view.
Based on a network processor core embedded into the Ethernet Switch, the AX family of access switches is designed to retain the advantages of a network processor, such as feature flexibility and design flexibility for ring, star, dual star, and meshed topologies, while providing low cost and high performance in the access. The switches offer advanced user flow management of quadruple-play services for voice, video, television, and data as well as Carrier Ethernet services such as E-LAN, E-Line, and E-Tree for business users.
Due to their high integration and low power consumption, I-temp variants are also offered to enable hardened outdoor applications.
The AX family of access switches consists of:
- AX310 series: 50G duplex, 12x10GbE, 56xGbE
- AX210 series: 25G duplex, 6x10GbE, 28xGbE
- AX340 series: 50G duplex, 12x10GbE, 56xGbE optionally with advanced access TM
- AX240 series: 25G duplex, 6x10GbE, 28xGbE optionally with advanced access TM.
"By leveraging its tier one customer base in Carrier Ethernet, Xelerated is well positioned to extend into the fiber access market," said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "The AX family is a unique solution that provides network-equipment vendors with leading integration combined with programmable packet processing. Platforms based on the AX family of switches should enable carriers to deploy new features and protocols, extending the service life of their Carrier Ethernet infrastructure."
Specifically, the AX240 and AX340 devices support advanced traffic management to QoS for quadruple-play services with fine-granular user flow management (EIR, CIR, CBS, EBS) and flow control. Flexible service provisioning is supported with features like carrier-grade OAM protocols, such as 802.1ag, 802.1ah, and ITU Y-1731. Synchronous Ethernet and precision time protocol support wireless and circuit/leased line emulation. Carrier-grade reliability with memory protection, high service availability, detection and recovery from incidents within 50 msec, node and link redundancy and hitless in-service upgrades are supported.
The AX series is fully software compatible with the Xelerated's HX300 family of products, as well as its previous generation network processor, the X11.
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