RAD Joins Hands with Other Industry Leaders to Demonstrate Viability of MPLS Infrastructure for Deployment of Ethernet, TDM and ATM-based Services

Paris, 16th February 2005: RAD Data Communications has announced that at the MPLS World Congress, which opened today, it is demonstrating interoperability of the company's ETX-510 VPLS access device, which is designed to support Hierarchical Virtual Private LAN services (H-VPLS) for deployment of Ethernet services over MPLS networks, conforming to IETF specifications. The company is also showing functionality for immediate implementation of TDM-over-MPLS according to the MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance IA 4.0 standard as well as ATM pseudowire tunneling over an MPLS backbone. In addition, RAD is exhibiting the effectiveness of transporting E1 over IP over MPLS, from the customer premises.

"When considering MPLS architecture, the industry's focus has been mainly on core network engineering as well as on multiservice edge functionality," explains Dr Yuri Gittik, Director of Business Development at RAD Data Communications. "At this event, RAD's contribution has enabled the pendulum to be shifted to the deployment of MPLS technology in the access up to the customer premises. The shift is based on pseudowire implementations with dedicated access gateways."

"Along with our industry partners, RAD has demonstrated the practicality of building out a robust MPLS access infrastructure to support new and legacy services with end-to-end control," adds Gittik. "Furthermore, by verifying the functionality of running more traditional technologies over an IP/MPLS core in concert with existing implementation agreements and industry-accepted standards, RAD has established the viability of using the packet switched backbone to support the deployment of popular and lucrative 'legacy' services," Gittik concludes.

RAD products participating in the interoperability testing and implementation demonstration, in addition to the ETX-510 VPLS access device, include the company's new Gmux-2000 central office TDMoIP®/MPLS gateway, the IPmux-14 TDMoIP/MPLS gateway and the ACE-3200 ATM aggregation device.

The MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance (MFA) is demonstrating interoperability and scalability of Layer 2 MPLS Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), as well as the interoperability of MPLS Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) capabilities at MPLS World Congress in Paris, France, 16th-18th February. The test event has been organised by European Advanced Networking Test Centre (EANTC) and endorsed by the MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance. Participants are demonstrating multvendor hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) and MPLS Ethernet, TDM and ATM pseudowire implementations and scalability, as well as MPLS ping and traceroute interoperability. Additional information about the Alliance and the demonstration is available online at www.mplsforum.org.