Hatteras Previews DNA

The folks at Hatteras Networks are not shy about touting the opportunity for service providers in Ethernet over copper. At NXTCOMM, the company’s booth featured inflatable “cash cows” suspended from the ceiling. They were visible across the show floor. But the company has a few secrets. Behind a smoked-glass case the company hid its newest development, DNA.

DNA stands for Dynamic Native Allocation of services, and it is the foundation for a new generation of Hatteras gear. “It allows you to dial in an ideal mix of TDM and Ethernet natively,” said Gary Bolton, vice president of marketing and product management for Hatteras. He explained that this is helpful to service providers that are trying to migrate from legacy networks.

The technique resembles one that is becoming popular among optical vendors. Both Fujitsu and Alcatel-Lucent have developed similar universal switch fabrics that allow transport of SONET and Ethernet natively on a sliding scale. Hatteras is applying the idea to copper networks.

Bolton said two applications that are well-suited to this technology are cell towers that are transitioning from TDM to Ethernet and business customers that are switching from PBXs to VoIP networks.

DNA-enabled “transitioning” platforms are planned, but Bolton declined to offer a release date. So, why go to the trouble of a display – albeit a veiled one? “We want to show it’s way more than PowerPoint,” Bolton said.

Mark Ventura, vice president of hardware engineering for Hatteras, demonstrates how DNA-enabled platforms will allow service providers to dial in TDM or Ethernet.

Hatteras Networks www.hatterasnetworks.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines