PacketFront intros ASR6000 gigabit-to-the-home platform

Swedish vendor PacketFront has a new addition to its advanced service router (ASR) product family, the ASR6000. The broadband router uses a hybrid ASIC and network processor design to deliver improved functionality for controlling bandwidth consumption and traffic quality of services in the access layer, the company claims.

The ASR6000 supports 100-Mbps and 1-Gbps speeds over both copper and fiber access ports, as well as providing full wirespeed IPv4 and IPv6 routing and switching. The compact form factor makes the ASR6000 suitable for local deployments in buildings and high-density central-office installations. The new features reduce the operational costs for running broadband networks, as well as improving the quality of the delivered services, says PacketFront.

“The two main challenges facing broadband operators today are consumers’ increasing demands for bandwidth and the need for a secure IPv6 Internet access. The ASR6000 delivers both of these,” says Fredrik Nyman, access product manager at PacketFront. “IPv6 security is at the top of the agenda for many broadband networks. The ASR6000 native dual-stack deployment makes it possible to proceed without this issue becoming an obstacle.”

The new, script-based service control framework means that each ASR6000 can independently use RADIUS or DHCP servers to authenticate and to supply services to end-user clients. This creates a very cost-effective approach for service control and network management.

The ASR6000 also contains features to simplify network operations. For example, remote packet capture and quality inspection of TV broadcasts make it possible to analyze each customer’s experience of network services and shorten troubleshooting time. Furthermore, the ASR6000 provides improved queuing and scheduling with thousands of virtual queues, true ingress and egress traffic shaping, and fair queuing to ensure the best possible customer experience when using the Internet.

The ASR6000 has been selected by Affärsverken, a utilities company in Karlskrona in the south of Sweden, to upgrade approximately 7000 ports in the local municipality’s network, which serves official organizations including schools and local government offices.

“We selected the ASR6000 because of its ability to deliver customized services for the municipality network,” said Jan Lindqvist, manager business area broadband from Affärsverken. “In particular, the ASR6000 feature for authenticating and enabling different services for different end-users such as teachers and students in the school part of the network were key features in selecting the platform.”

The ASR6000 provides an efficient mix of municipality control over services and network operator control over infrastructure that is unique in the gigabit-to-the-home (GTTH) market, PacketFront claims.