Atrica hardens Ethernet for outdoor environments

Carrier Ethernet equipment vendor Atrica this week unveiled a switch designed for outdoor, uncontrolled environments.

The A-2160 allows network operators to extend their Ethernet service points of presence (POPs), Atrica says. It's designed to be stand-mounted or pole-mounted, and reduces time-to-market for wireless backhaul and Fiber-to-the-X applications.

Atrica claims the A-2160 is the first Carrier Ethernet device with an environmentally hardened internal design and waterproof metallic enclosure. The product has been approved for deployment by Cox Communications, which was instrumental in the switch's design, Atrica says.

The product is currently undergoing Carrier Ethernet certification at the Metro Ethernet Forum, Atrica officials say.

The A-2160 features dual redundant AC/DC power supplies that can be replaced in the field. It supports short or long distances on the network side using pluggable SFP or SSF transceivers.

It also supports "hard" QoS with committed information rate, excess information rate and priority with 64Kbps and 1Mbps granularity, Atrica says. Other features, according to Atrica, include Call Admission Control to ensure end-to-end bandwidth guarantees; 50ms protection; OAM functions including fast and pinpoint fault detection, alarm-service correlation, Ethernet loop-backs, and round-trip delay, jitter and packet loss measurement; wire-speed performance; customer traffic mapping mechanisms that allow multiple services on one access interface; and up to 2,000 connections per device.

The A-2160 is available now. Atrica does not disclose pricing.

Separately, Atrica has landed a US$28.2 million round of new financing. Led by Vesbridge Partners and GunnAllen Venture Partners, the round includes continued funding from existing investors Innovacom -- the venture capital subsidiary of France Telecom -- JK&B, and Investor Growth; and from new investor AT&T, with debt financing from European Venture Partners.

Atrica will use the funds to expand engineering and operations functions to support deployments of its Carrier Ethernet systems at service providers, network operators and enterprises.

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