Buying Tips

Indian operators are faced with two big challenges today—one building business with many revenue channels and value-added services to make up the margin, and two, provisioning dedicated voice and data link over the last mile, quickly and affordably. Multiplexers being those points in the telecom network where different traffics merge or segregate from core to access and from access to core, they are critical units of the network that make a direct impact on the business done by a telecom service provider.

As the customer today requires different types of links with different media and the ability to efficiently carry different kinds of applications over them, multiplexers must be in a position to meet these heterogeneous demands. And as the load of telecom network increases, the significance of the right multiplexers—with good throughput, service provisioning and easy manageability—can be easily gauged.

n Speed Programmability: This is a critical aspect for service providers due to the fact that multiplexer node from a PoP should be capable of supporting residential broadband/SME/corporate customers at a speed desired by them. Also, an existing customer, having opted for a particular speed, may wish to upgrade or downgrade the speed, depending on a change in the need over a period of time. Hence it is important that multiplexer should support flexibility of bandwidth provisioning through the speed programmability feature.

n Wide Choice of Cards/Supported Standards: This enhances the flexibility and versatility of the multiplexer. This is a key a factor to be considered if future changes or expansion of the network is envisaged.

n Support for Multiple Access Technologies and Standards: The subscribers may be geographically distributed around a PoP over varying distances, ranging from 1 km to 5 km and may be in need of different types of access circuits supporting different needs. Hence, the multiplexer should be capable of supporting all DSL interfaces through addition of corresponding functional modules in the multiplexer node. DSL standards like HDSL/ADSL/SDSL/VDSL have to be supported. With the convergence of CATV networks and Ethernet LAN with various WAN technologies, there is a need for the multiplexer to be able to provision both cable TV and gigabit Ethernet link.

n Media Flexibility: A very important requirement is versatility in supporting multiple options like copper, fiber and radio in addition to point-to-point and multipoint bandwidth provisioning. Different users want different speeds and quality of services. A service provider cannot provide these without the multiplexer providing all types of media.

n Time-of-the-day Programmability: Access circuit speed of a customer may have to be changed on the fly at a very short notice, depending on the time-of-the-day requirements supporting bulk data transfer batch processing and enquiry and response as well as broadcasting requirements. The multiplexer must be able to fulfill these requirements.

n Versatility in Programming of Physical Interfaces: The service provider’s network topology keeps changing from the point of view of parenting relationship, depending on the hierarchical evolution of the network. Physical interfaces in the network, both on the trunk side or the access side could need frequent changes. If trunk interface programmability is supported then trunk speeds should be capable of getting increased online from say 2 Mbps to 155 Mbps. This will enable the network to take care of sudden demand for bandwidth.