TIA Member Spotlight:

TIA welcomes one of its newest members, Accedian Networks!

Accedian Networks is a privately held, VC-backed company located in Montreal, Canada, and supported by an experienced management team and advisory board with a proven track record in the telecommunications industry. Accedian cultivates a strong in-house leading-edge expertise on the forefront of emerging standards for carrier-grade Ethernet services.

Accedian provides network performance assurance solutions for Ethernet service providers. Its Ethernet Service Assurance Platform (ESAP) allows clearly defining, maintaining and assuring Ethernet SLAs from end-to-end.

Accedian’s Service Assurance Platform can be used in diverse applications such as carriers offering Ethernet private line business services. One sector providing enormous traction at the moment is wireless backhaul; wireless service providers have started shifting their cell site backhaul technology from T1 to Ethernet, which supports the bandwidth explosion of 4G/EV-DO/HSDPA wireless services much more efficiently. On these new services, packetized voice and video are increasing considerably but are often hampered by latency/jitter/loss issues. In order to pass these voice and data packets over the network with integrity, wireless service providers are asking their backhaul subcontractors for specific SLA parameter assurance as a value-added feature. This is where Accedian’s unique technology comes into play.

Accedian Networks helps Ethernet service providers achieve two main goals:

• Differentiating themselves by offering Value Added Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Achieving tremendous OPEX savings for the service providers.

Accedian’s President and CEO Patrick Ostiguy co-founded Avantas Networks in 1999 as senior product marketing manager and launched the industry’s first portable Ethernet and SONET field-services test-set. In 2001, Avantas Networks was acquired for $100 million by EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering, where he continued his role in product management and participated in several due diligence task forces for other acquisitions. In 1995, he was also part of the initial Positron Fiber Systems (PFS) team, which commercialized the industry’s first Ethernet over SONET Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP) and which was acquired in 1997 by RELTEC and MARCONI for $200 million, where he continued his role of product manager and won RELTEC’s 1998 Marketing Award. With over a decade of pertinent experience in the telecom industry, Patrick Ostiguy was responsible for filing for several patent applications (patents pending) and publishing several trade press technology articles. Patrick brings a solid background in product management and marketing, a proven track-record managing product development programs and a strong understanding of carriers’ needs to Accedian Networks.

Mr. Ostiguy spoke with TIA Network staff to tell us more about the organization.

Please tell our readers about Accedian’s products, services and solutions. 

Accedian Networks’ solution consists of an Ethernet Service Assurance Platform (E-SAP) that adds predictability, maintainability and manageability to wireless and wireline carriers. Ethernet carriers are demanding solutions that can assure value-added services as well as provide value-added end-to-end service level agreements and that have operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) functions that are missing in Ethernet. These features, found in traditional telecommunication networks, are essential for a carrier to assure the quality, reliability, availability and remote management of the services being delivered.

Accedian Networks’ Ethernet Service Assurance Platform is comprised of hardware and software elements installed in strategic locations of the carrier’s wireless or wireline network and complements the existing Ethernet service delivery infrastructure.

Accedian’s flagship product line, the EtherNID™ family (featured in New Product Spotlight), is installed in-line at the edge of the carrier’s network. The EtherNID™ sets a clear demarcation point between the customer and the carrier’s Ethernet network.

Using an innovative, standards-based approach (eight patents pending), the Accedian EtherNID™ family provides the industry’s most seamless and precise end-to-end measurements of Ethernet SLA parameters as well as OAM functions such as layer 1-4 loopbacks, and remote fault indications, reducing OPEX, minimizing truck-roll and facilitating troubleshooting of emerging Ethernet services. The company has launched six EtherNID™ products to date, with others scheduled in coming quarters.

What standards and patents is Accedian currently working on?

Accedian is an active and contributing member of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) involved in defining the features and functions associated with Ethernet Demarcation and Service Assurance. On the forefront of emerging Ethernet OAM standards, Accedian cultivates an expertise in standards such as IEEE’s 802.1ag and ITU-T’s Y.1731. Furthermore, Accedian currently has eight patents pending in the area of Ethernet Demarcation, SLA measurements and in-service live network testing.

Accedian recently introduced Seamless Throughput Measurement, which allows Ethernet service providers to validate the maximum throughput of a circuit while the end-customer traffic remains completely unaffected. Please tell us more about this technology and what a valuable tool it is for your customers.

This new patent-pending feature allows carriers to prove the end-user is getting the bandwidth he or she is paying for without having to bring down the service, and thus generating considerable savings in OPEX by avoiding the use of costly maintenance windows (nights and weekends). Furthermore, it allows periodically exercising maximum service performance after commissioning changes in the network.

For the past several years, RFC-2544 has been the standard method of validating the performance of an Ethernet Virtual Circuit at the time of turn-up or out-of-service. Seamless Throughput Measurement offers a breakthrough method to perform in-service RFC-2544 validation non-intrusively, while end-user traffic continues flowing seamlessly.

Tell us the value you gain from your TIA membership. 

Accedian particularly enjoys the substantial discounts and priority space at TIA-affiliated trade shows including NXTcomm, as well as the opportunities to network with customers and industry leaders through Webinars, meetings and conferences. Furthermore, being VC-backed requires a fair amount of market research in order to validate business plans, among other things. TIA offers Accedian several useful market data resources and analysis.

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