Full Story

Interview with Oren Feld - Product Line Manager

Q. Telco Systems recently introduced zero-touch provisioning to its family of demarcation devices, called T-Marc. What is zero-touch provisioning? A. Zero-touch provisioning is a set of tools that allows an operator to automate device provisioning and service activation without pre-configuring the device in the operator’s warehouse prior to deploying it in the field.

Q. What advantages does it provide to the service provider?

A. Service providers today are facing great operational issues when deploying next-generation services over Ethernet networks. The increased demand for diverse services and SLAs causes services to become more complex to provision.

Therefore, every field technician has to get training for a large amount of features, technologies and devices, causing the operator’s OPEX to increase. Zero-touch provisioning allows the operator to activate services automatically from a central site, eliminating the need send a field technician to activate the service, thus reducing operator’s OPEX.

Q.How does it work?

A. The operator’s engineering department creates a set of service templates based on the operator’s service offerings.

When a customer purchases a service, the operations department uses the template to create a configuration file with the customer’s parameters. The configuration file is placed in a TFTP server and is associated with the T-Marc’s MAC address.

When the T-Marc boots up, it sends a DHCP request to the operator’s DHCP server. The DHCP response includes, in addition to the IP address, the IP address of the TFTP server and the file name of that T-Marc’s specific configuration file.

The T-Marc then downloads the configuration file and loads it. This concludes the activation process.

Q. What products support zero touch provisioning?

A. Telco Systems has a long standing experience in the FTTX market with zero-touch provisioning in its EdgeGate products. 

The company’s engineers has taken that vast experience and implemented it in the T-Marc family of demarcation devices, including the T-Marc 250, T-Marc 280 and T-Marc 300.

T-Marc 250	T-Marc 280	T-Marc 300