World Wide Packets is introducing gear to support virtual Ethernet LAN services to homes and businesses over copper wiring or fiber optics.
The network-based equipment can impose quality-of-service controls per application that enables, for example, voice packets to receive priority queuing to insure that quality of calls is high.
The company is introducing two boxes that support virtual private LAN services. VPLS employs Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) to establish fully meshed network connections across a carrier network. To do this, the new gear can impose MPLS tags on packets that will be recognized by routers across the network. Currently, service providers have to map World Wide Packets tags to other QoS schemes used across the network.
For example, to map to Cisco Systems gear would require using either RSVP or DiffServ to set up a VPLS link across the network, World Wide Packets says. Later, as providers and vendors standardize on MPLS and ensure interoperability among their gear, this mapping will become unnecessary, the company says.
World Wide Packets says it is participating in MPLS interoperability tests with Alcatel SA, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks. and others this week.
The first new product is called LE-54V, which is a customer site box with two Gigabit Ethernet uplinks to the provider network and eight 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet ports facing the customer network. It costs about US$1,200, the company says. It is scheduled to ship at the end of September.
The second box is called LE-311V, which has four Gigabit Ethernet uplinks and 24 ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet on the customer side. It costs about US$2,700. It is scheduled to ship at the end of July.
The company's gear can be configured in seven-node rings that can reroute traffic if links on the ring fail and restore connections within 50 milliseconds, the timeframe necessary to make such failures imperceptible on voice calls. The company claims it can support up to 21 nodes in a ring, but restoration would take up to 100 milliseconds.
The devices come with their own management platform that includes element, configuration, topology and alarm management. The platform integrates with carrier OSSes.
Passive optical networking gear competes with World Wide Packets' equipment but requires optical fiber all the way to customer sites. It also does not support QoS per application.