Carrier Access unveils new platforms

Carrier Access last week unveiled a pair of access routers designed to let service providers deliver converged IP voice, data, video and security services to enterprise customers.

Carrier Access last week unveiled a pair of access routers designed to let service providers deliver converged IP voice, data, video and security services to enterprise customers.

The Adit 3000 series consists of two customer premises-based offerings for delivering managed IP services: the 3402 multiservice router and the 3104 IP business gateway.

The 3402 is targeted at small to midsize businesses. It features two routed Fast Ethernet ports, four T-1/E-1 ports, integrated security, stateful firewall, intrusion detection and network address translation, and support for up to 24 lines of voice.

The 3104 is designed to create a secure partition between internal private and external public network access for remote users. It supports a single T-1 or Fast Ethernet WAN port, four-port Ethernet switch, a stateful firewall, intrusion detection, IPSec VPN with encryption, and converts up to 24 lines of voice lines to VoIP.

The Adit 3000 series uses IP network processors with integrated security to deliver 10 to 100 times the routing performance of existing offerings, Carrier Access says. This lets users inspect packets even for processor- and bandwidth-intensive applications as streaming media and VoIP.

“The benefit is if you turn on features, you can run these things at full wire-speed,” says Dave Passmore, research director at The Burton Group. “That’s been a shortcoming with Cisco” and other routers based on general-purpose processors.

Carrier Access is positioning the Adit 3000 series against Cisco’s 1700, 2600 and 3700 series routers. Cisco, however, last week announced its next-generation 1800, 2800 and 3800 access routers, which feature higher performance with integrated security.

Additional features of the Adit 3000 series are its ability to alleviate the need for customers to purchase, deploy and manage a stand-alone security device, Carrier Access says. Businesses also can use the devices to converge existing voice lines onto their data network to save money, according to the company.

For service providers, the new products enable expansion of services and capacity without requiring installation of additional routing and access equipment. The products also can be managed remotely by the service provider, which reduces the cost of sending personnel to the customer site for support, the company says.

The Adit 3402 costs $1,095 for one T-1 and two Ethernet ports.

The Adit 3104 is due out in the fourth quarter. Pricing starts at $995.