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Interview with Manu Kaycee, VP Product Strategy

Q. Telco Systems has announced a Service Mediator which eases the management of Ethernet CPE devices.  How do you see this technology benefiting the service provider? A. Network and service management are key areas of concern for service providers. Improved ROI, scalable operation, flexible deployments, and service assurance are cornerstone requirements for fiscal improvements and service unification over packet-based networks.

Service Mediator extends Telco Systems’ leading-edge BiNOSCenter NG management framework and addresses each service provider cornerstone requirement I just mentioned. It provides automatic discovery, zero-touch provisioning and surveillance. Upcoming releases will support aggregated FCAPS, tight coupling with other industry-standard assurance frameworks, and high-value functions such as service profiling.

Q. Can you explain briefly how service mediation works?

A. At this time, Service Mediator resides at the edge of a service provider’s network, one level up from demarcation and other NID-type devices. It is embodied in our T5C-XG service aggregation switch that, in addition, provides transport aggregation and connectivity.

Service Mediator discovers directly-attached devices in a secure manner. Industry-standard procedures and protocols are used to automatically discover, identify, authenticate, authorize, and provision demarcation devices. Service Mediator creates a virtualized chassis view and asynchronously updates BiNOSCenter NG and its associated applications.

Acting as a mid-level manager and virtual management agent, Service Mediator offloads numerous compute-intensive operations and tasks from management systems and embedded agents.

Q. Which CPE devices can be managed through the Service Mediator?

A. Based on customer commitments and priorities, the T-Marc family of demarcation devices is managed through Service Mediator at this time. We have recently introduced a new T-Marc family member – T-Marc 280. This device will be supported in the next Service Mediator release.

Q. You mentioned that the Company’s T5C XG is used as a mediation server or physical proxy.  How many CPE devices can the T5C XG manage?

A. Yes, as embodied on the T5C-XG, Service Mediator functions as a “physical proxy.” It supports 24 CPE, or demarcation, devices, providing an aggressive aggregation ratio.

Q. Are there other functions that the T5C XG can perform in the access network as well as being a mediation server?

A. As I previously mentioned, T5C-XG is a service access switch. While performing service mediation and proxy designation, the T5C-XG also functions as a standards-based, high-performance aggregation system. Supporting up to 4 10G interfaces, the T5C-XG supports all IEEE and MEF standards, with a straightforward software upgrade to IP routing and L3 switching.

Q. How secure is service mediation?

A. Service Mediation is extremely secure. It is based on proven IETF security standards that are deployed in global networks. Furthermore, our baseline implementation has been field-proven and certified by key accounts.

Q. What are the Company’s plans to enhance this technology going forward?

A. Given Service Mediator’s current success and customer acceptance, we are planning the following enhancements:

• provide planned service management capabilities in concert with our BiNOSCenter NG platform;
• extend the mediation framework with APIs for open access to/by 3rd-party management systems;
• complete integration with industry-standard service management and assurance solutions;
• virtualize the mediation framework to support and manage a large number of remote, non-attached devices.