Actus brings Ethernet rings to backhaul

Actus Networks, a four-year-old South Korean vendor of carrier Ethernet access gear, is making its public debut in North America this week at the Supercomm trade show, offering ring-based carrier Ethernet gear for wireless backhaul applications.

At the show, Actus is demonstrating its new Ganesh303 carrier Ethernet aggregation device, positioning it in particular for 4G backhaul. The compact, eight-port Fast Ethernet access box handles PBB-TE, circuit emulation and TDM traffic such as T-1s.

Actus’s gear is based on the International Telecommunications Union’s G.8032 standard for Ethernet ring protection, which the company expects to be complete next year. That ring architecture protects signals by offering backup paths for them to switch to in under 50 milliseconds.

Actus is entering the North American network with help from two large equipment vendor partners that it won’t name. Those vendors are already selling Actus’s gear on a private-label basis and recently won a design win in Europe for the G303 but haven’t yet won any sales in North America.