Equipment vendors are unveiling a load of new carrier Ethernet products at the NXTcomm08 trade show this week, much of it focused on mobile backhaul and wholesale enterprise data applications.

Though migration to Ethernet is a popular notion in the mobile backhaul space, it hasn't quite gotten off the ground yet, in part because it forces carriers to figure out how to transition from today's legacy systems. To that end, vendors offer a mix of Ethernet-over-fiber; Ethernet-over-bonded-legacy-lines; and pseudowires, which emulate legacy circuits on Ethernet networks.

Ceterus Networks, a vendor of circuit-bonding equipment, will introduce a series of gigabit Ethernet switches for mobile backhaul and enterprise data applications. Available in August, the UTS4300 delivers native Ethernet and T-1/E-1 over up to 24 pseudowire ports. For mobile backhaul, it also includes ports that can be used for video surveillance and to adjust the tilt of antennae.

RAD Data Communications is targeting similar apps with its new Ipmux216 pseudowire access gateway, touting its ability to support multiple independent clocking mechanisms for different customers, all over Ethernet. The one-rack-unit-tall box, available later this month, allows up to 16 different timing sources.

“We built into the ASIC the capability of adaptively recovering clocking on a per-T-1 basis rather than on a product basis,” said Eitan Schwartz, vice president of carrier Ethernet technologies for RAD. “So in mobile backhaul, you could have four T-1s locked to T-Mobile and eight to AT&T.”

Anda Networks, a provider of Ethernet-over-PDH circuits such as T-1s, will announce a new 10 Gb/s subscriber interface to keep up with rising capacity demands among enterprises and retail service providers. Turin Networks also is adding EoPDH to its own access platform.

A new product from Aktino, available later this summer, lets carriers migrate from legacy TDM and ATM technology to carrier Ethernet at the DS-3 level. It delivers “up to 90+ Mb/s” over 12,000 feet of copper, according to Aktino, using the vendor's characteristic pairing of discrete multitone and multiple input/multiple output technologies to bond copper lines. The new product, a combination of existing Aktino gear, allows carriers to switch from 45 Mb/s DS-3 traffic to carrier Ethernet using a simple graphical interface. Although Aktino's technology typically delivers symmetric bandwidth, the new product grants some options for asymmetrical setup to accommodate mobile backhaul networks.

Even Redback Networks, an established IP router vendor, is introducing its first carrier Ethernet switch this week. The Smart Metro (or SM) 480, available in the fourth quarter, is the first in a line of Layer 2 gear from Redback that will offer fast, economical transport of carrier Ethernet services using point-to-point protocol while retaining some of the intelligence of Redback's IP-based routers.

Essentially it allows carriers to extend subscriber management information and capabilities farther out in the network, Redback said. That reach, brought now to the metro, could give wholesale carriers a better grip on carrier Ethernet services. The SM480's quarter-rack chassis can handle 256,000 virtual LANs or users and 2.3 million queues per form, Redback said.

“We're keeping the awareness from an application level that is of value and the granularity to understand those services,” said Steve Murray, vice president of product management for Redback. “We still have the same hierarchical [quality of service], the same amount of queues and the ability to schedule and support services as in the SmartEdge [products], but we're doing it at Layer 2.”