Mixing IP and TDM Transmissions over Wireless Ethernet

Published on: 17th March 2008

Wireless network vendor, DragonWave has announced a new Service Delivery Unit (SDU) product portfolio, enabling carriers to converge Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and Internet Protocol (IP) services onto an Ethernet network foundation.

"The SDU offers service providers a compelling path to full-blown carrier Ethernet," said Todd Graetz, CEO for Montana-based Cutthroat Communications, a transAria company. "The ability to convert to packets at the edge of the network and then pass though intermediate sites as a single, converged, IP-based stream reduces network costs and significantly simplifies operations. With the SDU, DragonWave is future-proofing our network for changes in traffic mix moving forward."

The new SDU pseudowire solution is another DragonWave tool for enabling carriers to converge TDM and IP traffic across a single, wireless Ethernet infrastructure. With the SDU providing both pseudowire and Ethernet switching functionality, a carrier should be able to reduce investment by deploying a single box for these two functions in its network.

"The benefits of carrier Ethernet are well understood, but carriers need the flexibility to make incremental steps in convergence," said Emmy Johnson, Principal Analyst with Skylight Research. "They seek to continue to benefit from legacy investment, even while evolving for support of new Ethernet services-all while holding capital and operational expenditures in check."

"Carriers need tools for keeping their cost of churn low, and we engineered the SDU with that goal in mind," said Alan Solheim, Vice President of Product Management at DragonWave. "The SDU enables carriers to gradually and cost-effectively migrate more of their network from TDM circuits to packet-based traffic and realize the benefits of true network convergence. With network operations and management so simplified, this enables carriers to more aggressively address new markets."

 

Tags: [ethernet]  [edge]  [dragonwave]  [churn]  [true]