Electric Energy T&D - Index

Electric Energy T&D - EE Magazine March / April - Index

Circle 22 on Reader Service Card
_______________________________________
Industrial Grade GigE Multi-Service
Access Platform Touts Advantages
over SONET & SDH
Irvine, ca—TC Communications Inc., the
leader in industrial fiber optic network
connectivity technology, today announced
the commercial availability of its new
flagship Gigabit Ethernet Multi-Service
Access Platform (MSAP), the JumboSwitch TM
product Family.
The center piece of the JumboSwitch family
is a substation & industrial hardened (-40°C
to 80°C), fully-managed and easily scalable
Gigabit Ethernet switch that integrates up to
seven hot-swappable Ethernet, Voice & Data
interface cards onto a Gigabit backbone
Ethernet fiber optic network.
Based on the most advanced Ethernet/
IP, VoIP and TDMoIP technologies, the
JumboSwitch MSAP family offers an
efficient, low cost alternative to SONET/
SDH network solutions for many
applications, and promises straight-forward
and simple scalability for any network
topologies and sizes.
Compared to the complicated hierarchies
of SONET or SDH based systems,
the JumboSwitch drastically reduces
operational expenses since it totally
eliminates unnecessary hardware layers,
thus significantly lowered the skill level
required for installation, maintenance and
troubleshooting.
In the past, SONET and SDH communication
systems were the only choices when it came
to building mission critical automation
and control systems. But, progress in the
control, computing and communication
technologies has made these TDM based
communication systems basically obsolete.
The trend is moving towards Ethernet/IP
based communication backbones.
The JumboSwitch makes communication
network design extremely easy and straight
forward. Legacy equipment, e.g. T1/E1,
T3/E3, RS- 3 /RS-485, can co-exist
harmoniously on the same platform with
more advanced technologies including
Ethernet, GigE fiber ports, Turbo Serial for
protective relay communication, and LANex,
a virtual VoIP PBX without the need of
additional Call Managers or SIP Servers.
Management, networking and security
features are extensive and include STP,
RSTP, SNMP (v1& v ), VLAN, IGMP
Snooping, Port Rate Control, QoS, etc.
The JumboSwitch supports all popular
topologies including redundant ring, bus,
string, star and add/drop multiplexing. It is
16 I March-April 2008 Issue
available in U and 4U (rack) versions. With
TC’s proprietary self healing technology, the
recovery time for JumboSwitch fiber rings is
less than 50ms for any number of nodes.
Configurations are flexible and easily
determined by network engineers. For
example, it could be configured as a
10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet 4 -port
redundant ring switch with any combination
of fiber or copper ports. Or, it could
be configured with 1 channels of
Ethernet, 8 channels of T1/E1, 8 channels
of phone and 4 channels of RS- 3 .
All JumboSwitch family interface cards
come with optional substation hardened
and Industrial Hardened versions
(-40°C to 80°C) for extreme environments
that meet or exceed all pertinent
industrial specifications.
Victor Liang, V.P. Sales & Marketing,
noted that the JumboSwitch offers users
outstanding price-performance ratios for
their communication networks and extreme
ease to design, build and maintain.
“JumboSwitch substantially reduces capital
expenditures by maximizing bandwidth
usage and eliminating unnecessary
hardware hierarchies,” Mr. Liang said. “And,
compared to SONET/SDH solutions, users
will be pleasantly surprised by how much it
reduces operational expenditures.
Mr. Liang also emphasized the importance
of bridging TDM and IP with GigE, TDMoIP,
RS- 3 /485 and VoIP.
“JumboSwitch is the ideal product for many
system and network engineers, that gives
them the best of both worlds, TDM and
Ethernet/IP, without having to compromise
on the project requirements.” For more
information, visit: www.tccomm.com
circle 65 on Reader Service card