From...

January 24, 2000
Web posted at: 2:03 p.m. EST (1903 GMT)

by Tim Greene

(IDG) -- If you're looking for anything from WAN access gear to high-speed data services, you're likely to find it at next week's ComNet 2000.

Vendors from start-up Sedona to NEC eLuminant Technologies are bringing out hardware, software and services aimed at easing service provisioning and opening access to bunches of bandwidth.

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For openers, Sedona will use ComNet to launch the company and premiere its new intelligent access gear. Carriers would buy Sedona's equipment then use it to provision voice and data services. The access device connects to a service provider network over almost any kind of link, such as T-1, frame relay or ATM.

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New services can be turned up instantly on the equipment through Sedona's management platform.

In the optical arena, NEC eLuminant Technologies will introduce a prototype of its passive optical networking (PON) equipment. PON technology brings fiber directly to customer sites, providing access to a pool of bandwidth that customers can tap into easily. If customers need more bandwidth, they can get it without requiring the service provider to run more lines to the site.

Also in the optical category, First Fiber will spotlight its new metropolitan-area fiber-optic access gear called CityLight. Like PON, the equipment will let carrier customers connect their networks directly to high-speed carrier optical nets, providing reserves of easily accessible bandwidth.

CityLight access boxes at customer sites plug into the fiber network on the WAN side and have standard LAN ports for customers. Customers can plug gear into Gigabit Ethernet, ATM155, ATM622, Fibre Channel or Fast Ethernet ports on CityLight gear. T-1 interfaces will be ready later this winter.

While these vendors focus on fiber, others are squeezing more out of copper lines with digital subscriber line (DSL). For example, Promatory Communications and Jetstream Communications will demonstrate the interoperability of their voice-over-DSL equipment.

The companies intend to work together to speed the provisioning of DSL voice services. In fact, Promatory and Jetstream say voice-over DSL service customers will be able to turn up extra voice channels on demand, rather than waiting the days or weeks it now takes to get conventional voice circuits. The companies claim they can set up 24 voice channels in minutes between Promatory's Intelligent Multiservice Access System (IMAS) gear and Jetstream's voice gateway.

The companies will also show the ability of Promatory's IMAS to reroute DSL voice calls around failures in a carrier's ATM network. Customers using frame relay can look to ADC Telecommunications to introduce a less-expensive way to monitor performance of their frame relay circuits. The company will announce ServicePoint Lite 1020, a 56/64K bit/sec frame relay DSU/CSU that includes software to monitor frame relay statistics that customers can then use to verify service-level agreements (SLA). The price tag: $645.

The gear makes it less expensive and simpler for enterprise customers to track the performance of individual frame relay links in their networks. With that data, network executives can project when and where more bandwidth is needed and determine whether service providers are meeting their SLAs.