Taking CrossPATH to the Max

Last year, ADC introduced the CrossPATH product line. It allowed service providers to take a single T1, run it out to the cell site and drop off however many voice and data circuits they needed per cell site using up to 24 DS0s. That concept was working well because it allowed service providers to use their T1s more efficiently. Providers, however, encountered other problems, which required ADC to develop another solution. The result is the CrossPATH Max.

The CrossPATH Max is designed for providers that need to ensure that their circuits and service applications are protected. Critical applications such as wireless data, SS7, control links and security solutions all require levels of protection. Service providers need the ability to manage, restore and configure their network services pro-actively.

Consider the example of the first cell site in a daisy chain from the MSC. If that T1 goes down, everything from that point on also goes down. According to Larry Singletary, ADC Access Products Division senior marketing manager, providers were getting cost-effective use of their T1s, but when the circuit went down, everything went with it.

With the CrossPATH Max, providers have assurance from the MSC to the cell site. Singletary told of an application in Mississippi where the Max made real sense.

"When they are putting up their cell sites at an average of seven miles per cell site, if they use one T1 along an interstate, they can cover 168 miles," he said. "They may not have the best coverage across the Mississippi Delta, but it's sufficient."

Singletary explained that the company installed the product in a 7-cell-site ring. The week after it was installed, an outage occurred.

"The software feature built into this does an automatic re-mapping," Singletary said. "Anywhere along the line that the cell site goes down, everything automatically turns around and reroutes all of the traffic. The CFO of that company told us that that one outage paid for what he would have spent in truck-roll and employee costs when this happened at 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday."

This application also helps protect the critical traffic between locations. ADC is working with a service provider in the Northeast. The local highway patrols use this provider's CDPD network. During a recent traffic stop, a cell site went down. As things turned out, the highway patrol, not having the ability to check, actually let a wanted suspect go. The local press latched on to the story and created some bad public relations for the service provider. The provider contacted ADC wanting a solution that would protect its critical services.

CrossPATH allows a provider to identify an alternate path before something critical happens.

"Because it's a software application, the carrier can choose whether to have voice or a particular critical data," Singletary said. "In this application, we can identify the CDPD traffic, prioritize that, and in the event of a failure of the link that it's carried on, it will automatically reroute to an alternate T1. What happens on that alternate T1 (is) if there is voice going down, the voice is pushed aside because you can only run so much traffic through it. In a case like that, the service provider is well aware of that and is happy to give up the voice to protect his CDPD traffic."

For service providers, each T1 represents an average of 1,000 customer-billing receipts. According to Singletary, that SS7 traffic is critical to the smaller or mid-size providers that depend on the billing traffic for their revenue. Most times, that traffic is going between MSCs.

"Through the software, we can accommodate whatever their particular application needs are in different areas," Singletary said.

The original CrossPATH, in and of itself, is basically a daisy-chain type of solution that can't be upgraded to a CrossPATH Max. So what does a CrossPATH customer do when it wants to upgrade? According to Singletary, one option is to swap out units and replace them with Cross-PATH Max for the application and service-protection features. The other option is to re-deploy the CrossPATH in a less critical area and implement the Cross-PATH Max in the higher critical locations.

Singletary said the company already is working on the next enhancement of the CrossPATH Max to accommodate 3G-service and application needs of wireless providers. It's also working on a full SNMP network-management solution.