Carrier-centric: Cisco steps up presence in dial-up market with integrated access server

Cisco Systems continued its shift into the public network market last week by introducing a universal access server that acts as an integrated solution for large dial-up points of presence.

The AS5800 is aimed at Bell regional holding companies, long-distance carriers, large Internet service providers and PTTs. That's apparent by its price, SS7 support, 99.999% availability (less than 5 minutes of downtime a year), support for large telco hunt groups and a backplane designed to support twice as many modems as its predecessors.

Cisco wants to help carriers expand their services and generate revenue during otherwise quiescent hours by offering services such as wholesale, virtual private networking and push technologies in early- morning hours, said Doug Frosst, product line manager.

The company also is helping to drive down the costs of operation with more scalable management techniques, he said. Cisco's system controller, a new platform that provides a single point of management and a rolled-up summary of all management traffic for a POP, is expected to provide that management. The platform is designed to carry voice over Internet protocol and fax over IP.

Cisco's acquisition of LightSpeed International enables it to offer an SS7 interface, although the software is not yet available.

The announcement pressures market leader Ascend to offer similar capabilities, analysts said. Ascend is working on SS7 developments but is not prepared to publicize them, said Kurt Bauer, vice president of access product management for Ascend.

Separately, BellSouth.net officials said the carrier is partnering with Cisco to eventually offer virtual private dial-up network service to corporate end users. The product has yet to be named, but it should be available in April. The virtual private dial-up network service is expected to appeal to customers that need more than simple dial-up but have no need for high-speed bandwidth applications, said John Stuhrenberg, vice president of business products for BellSouth.net.

The carrier is using the AS5200 and AS5300 to add capacity and scalability to its dial server pools and is evaluating the AS5800.

"Cisco is demonstrating that it is the Microsoft of the networking market," said Fred McClimans, CEO of Current Analysis, Sterling, Va.

A data analysis tool previously employed in the information technology world has found a home at Bell Atlantic, where it will be used to improve Internet traffic management.

Bell Atlantic will use Gentia Software's networked business intelligence solution as a front end to its new data mart, which collects call usage information from its public network. The system, called Traffic Track, will allow network planners to analyze Internet traffic patterns, identify heavy users and re-route them to reduce congestion.

"Network planners wanted a better way to manage and monitor network traffic," said Stu Cartwright, director of marketing at the Wakefield, Mass.-based Gentia. "Bell Atlantic has service level agreements to meet with its Internet service provider customers and has to keep its own customers happy. This can help them accomplish that."

The software provides an application environment that allows carriers to construct a model for network monitoring through a drag-and-drop interface. Managers can quickly develop monitoring approaches to address conditions specific to their customers.

"Over the past 18 months, we've seen a significant increase in Internet traffic. The Gentia application will help us pinpoint this traffic and determine how to manage it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible," said Tom Nolting, staff director of network information systems at Bell Atlantic.

Bell Atlantic is building a data mart infrastructure that will gather records for every call made and store them in a central repository. The Gentia application runs on a Hewlett-Packard server and acts as a front end to the data mart. It enables end users to analyze traffic patterns, identify where growth is occurring and develop strategies to manage it.

The Gentia software also will be used to measure competitive local exchange carrier network usage as Bell Atlantic opens its local exchange to competition.