Anda serves up more Ethernet, inks Lucent deal

Anda Networks announced the launch of its EtherReach Series 2118 and 2210 platforms that are geared for carriers migrating frame relay and ATM service to Ethernet. The company also said it has signed an agreement with Lucent Worldwide Services to provide maintenance and deployment services.

Part of the vendor's new EtherReach series, the 2118 and 2210 is the first to offer the quality of service and rate-limiting granularity in 64 Kb/s increments, giving carriers the ability to offer services that are consistent with the legacy offerings.

"It allows the carriers to seamlessly migrate their frame relay service to Ethernet because they can bring it down in 64Zk chunks," said Greg Gum, vice president of marketing and business development for Anda.

Both boxes support up to 128 VLANs per Ethernet port, allowing carriers to offer multiple services types over a single Ethernet private line.

"What we're seeing is that where you see the higher bandwidth services is really metro-to-core," said Charles Kenmore, president and CEO of Anda. "What we're seeing in access is almost all sub-lambda [speed]. It's not that the other speeds don't exist, but they're not access speeds."

In addition to the comfort level that carriers feel in offering service in 64 kb/s chunks, the vendor is relying heavily on the ability to put an unlimited number of applications and departmental groups on a given Ethernet port. The latest in the 2000 series is also targeting carriers that want to reach off-net customers, Gum said. It's also designed to fit in with the company's other aggregation devices geared toward on-net customers in buildings with fiber access.

"One of Anda's big strengths is that as we've learned in the past there are always a couple of gotchas in deploying technology," he said. "You need to be able to deploy a full portfolio that addresses the reach issue."

As part of the Lucent agreement, LWS will provide support to Anda customers around the globe. That includes access to 11,000 network experts, 60 global network call and technical centers, and worldwide sparing, logistics and depot locations.

"We have seen over the last six months tremendous growth outside the North American carrier market and this allows us to expand," Gum said.