Copper Mountain Networks' VantEdge 3000 Broadband Services Concentrator will help service providers improve cost efficiencies and scalability of ATM-based networks.

by Wayne Kawamoto [June 18, 2001]

Copper Mountain Networks, a provider of copper-based broadband access solutions, recently announced its VantEdge 3000 Broadband Services Concentrator, due to hit the market in April of 2002.

Designed for the CO, Copper Mountain says that its VantEdge 3000 brings IP service intelligence to an installed base of ATM DSLAMs, which lets broadband service providers improve their cost-efficiencies and more easily scale their networks.

The VantEdge is also designed to provide carriers with a smooth migration from ATM to IP, which may enable them to offload the flood of new Internet and IP services traffic from their ATM transport networks, and reduce expenditures on new ATM switches.

Providers with ATM-based DSLAMs have traditionally relied on ATM switches for Layer 2 aggregation and centralized subscriber management systems for Layer 3 subscriber aggregation. As broadband access becomes a universal service, however, this approach can require massive new investments in ATM switches. Also, there are substantial operational costs for ATM network re-engineering and daily provisioning of thousands of individual subscriber virtual circuits—each with its own Quality of Service (QoS) parameters—through the DSLAMs, the ATM switches, and subscriber management systems.

According to Copper Mountain, its VantEdge 3000 Broadband Services Concentrator enables broadband service providers to substantially reduce their provisioning requirements, improve network scalability, and reduce their operational costs and capital expenditures by relocating circuit and subscriber aggregation functions to the access network.

Providers can subtend ATM DSLAMs deployed in a wiring center or in remote terminals to a colocated VantEdge 3000 and aggregate multi-service traffic from thousands of broadband customers onto a few shared virtual circuits to the network backbone.

The IP-aware VantEdge 3000 Broadband Services Concentrator is designed to make intelligent traffic-forwarding and queuing decisions in the access network based on any combination of header information at Layers 2, 3, and 4, and aggregate traffic from subtended ATM DSLAMs at multiple levels.

At Layer 2, it should enable the multiplexing of individual subscriber ATM PVCs from many subtended DSLAMs onto a single DS-3/E3 or OC-3/STM-1 facility, yielding savings in wide area network (WAN) backhaul costs.

For Internet traffic transported over Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), the VantEdge 3000 aggregates subscribers onto a single L2TP-based PVC from the wiring center. At Layer 3 and higher, the VantEdge aggregates like services from different subscribers onto shared virtual circuits to the WAN.

"The VantEdge Broadband Services Concentrator puts Layer 2 and Layer 3 aggregation functions where they belong—in the wiring center with the DSLAMs," said Bryan Long, vice president of marketing at Copper Mountain Networks. "Some applications, such as voice over ATM, require end-to-end ATM virtual circuits. However, most new services are IP-based, and most of the volume of traffic is IP. It makes much more sense to aggregate the IP traffic at the DSLAM than to transport it in thousands of individual virtual circuits. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to offload this traffic from the ATM transport network entirely, and route it directly via the SONET infrastructure to a regional IP services platform."

"ATM-based access solutions make service provisioning increasingly difficult and costly as providers expand their networks, because they force providers to provision end-to-end VCs every time they add customers, and every time they add a new service for a customer," added Jason Marcheck of the Strategis Group. "On the other hand, providers have invested substantially in ATM DSLAMs which are still serviceable, and replacing them is not an option. Copper Mountain's VantEdge 3000 Broadband Services Concentrator enables providers to leverage their existing ATM-based access infrastructure while at the same time realizing the cost efficiencies of IP-optimized network access solutions."

"Copper Mountain's new VantEdge Broadband Services Concentrator enables providers with large installed bases of ATM DSLAMs to provision multiple, high-value services more cost-effectively and to scale their networks more easily and more quickly," said Rick Gilbert, president and chief executive officer of Copper Mountain Networks. "The value proposition for broadband carriers is compelling: high-value services to more customers, with lower capital costs and a lower cost of operation."

Availability and pricing
The VantEdge Broadband Services Concentrator will be available in limited quantities in January 2002 and generally available in April 2002. List pricing for the VantEdge starts at $29,995.

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