ADTRAN has enhanced its IQ 710 Frame Relay device by adding traffic shaping capabilities to better prioritize demanding applications such as streaming media and voice.

by Wayne Kawamoto [February 7, 2002]

ADTRAN, Inc. announced new traffic shaping capabilities in its IQ 710 Frame Relay [definition] performance monitoring/traffic management platform. Using the IQ 710, the company says that service providers and network managers can identify and monitor bandwidth abuse and assign priorities to bandwidth consumption as they need to.

According to the company, the addition of traffic shaping to ADTRAN's IQ Frame Relay performance monitoring platform gives network managers more control over critical network resources. Where previously, managers could only monitor bandwidth, they should now be able to control it. As a result, mission-critical applications may be able to receive top priority, while less important applications can make use of remaining bandwidth.

ADTRAN says that its IQ 710 offers previously unavailable insight into network operations that can help managers identify usage patterns and trends. The platform is designed to make it easy for managers to determine true demand for bandwidth, and, as a result, avoid purchasing unnecessary and costly bandwidth. Furthermore, the IQ 710 should complement ADTRAN's IQ performance monitoring series that is already deployed for Frame Relay connectivity, routing, circuit monitoring, SLA verification, and disaster recovery.

The IQ 710 is designed to be an intelligent Frame Relay-aware traffic management platform. It connects to a Frame Relay network and gathers data regarding the usage of the wide area circuit. Its modular design provides two expansion slots for network interface and dial backup modules. It can be equipped with a 56/64k, T1/FT1, or T1/FT1 with DSX-1 network interface option module, designed to give users the ability to migrate to higher speed networks as their needs increase. The unit also supports a variety of optional dial back-up modules such as ISDN and V.34.

The IQ 710 is complemented by ADTRAN's N-Form network management software suite. N-Form is a modular, Java-enabled, Windows-based platform that combines the features of an SNMP management platform with a network trend analysis tool. With N-Form, the IQ 710 may be configured remotely through a graphical interface, as well as set to monitor alarm conditions and report on both Frame Relay and Application monitoring metrics in either graphical or tabular formats.

Availability and pricing
Traffic shaping will be available for the IQ 710 in March 2002 as a firmware upgrade for current customers at a list price of $650.

New IQ 710 traffic shaping models will list from $1,895 to $2,695 depending on the network interface.

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