By Paula Bernier

If you liked the T-Metro 100, wait until you try the T-Metro 200. Thats the word from David Lee, vice president of marketing and services at Telco Systems, who said this new member of the vendors metro Ethernet product family delivers more scalability, reliability and management by adding to the existing T-Metro 100 functionality two additional gigabit uplinks and support for hierarchical QoS, VPLS and label edge router functionality.

This product, for deployment in a POP or CO, is suitable for cellular backhaul, cableco SMB applications requiring T1 backhaul, and domestic and international metro Ethernet service deployments.

The hierarchical QoS functionality of the T-Metro 200 enables optimal use and prioritization of existing bandwidth for varying service classes, such as video, voice, business applications and e-mail/Web-browsing, with the ability to offer customized service level agreements. In addition, it allows implementations of tens of thousands of queues, independent for each service.

The T-Metro 200 also acts as a full VPLS provider edge device. It connects to multiple VPLS provider edge devices implementing multipoint Ethernet VPNs, which emulates end-user LAN over service providers MPLS backbones.

It acts as a label edge router, performing complex packet analysis and classification before the packet enters the core of the network, including Fast Reroute implementation for less than 50 milliseconds failure recovery.

And its enables MPLS ring implementation on the edge of the network using the unified management domain for the entire network. Together with Fast Reroute, this brings MPLS core intelligence to the metro access network.

Lee said Telco Systems introduced the T-Metro 100 in September 2005. The 100 and the 200 include 2gbps Ethernet SFP ports, eight 10/100 ports, 12 100Base FX and two unpopulated user slots that can be filled with a four-port T1/E1 circuit emulation module. Both products are also carrier-class, per the definition of the Metro Ethernet Forum, said Lee. He said that means they offer SONET-like protection; hard QoS metrics so service providers can offer committed information rates to emulate services such as frame relay and ATM and deliver the same SLAs offered on those services; support for TDM applications; and service management operations and maintenance to perform operations such as loopbacks; and scalability.

The T-Metro 200 will start shipping toward the end of April or in early May.

Telco Systems www.telco.com