ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA - Established Internet Service Provider (ISP), EscapeNet® is preparing to maximize opportunities from Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout by deploying newBrocade® (NASDAQ: BRCD) routers and switches at its new point of presence (PoP).
The ISP currently offers national ADSL2+ broadband services, and it plans to leverage NBN opportunities and expand its network with an additional PoP in New South Wales. With the NBN's fibre access network connecting customers at much higher speeds than conventional broadband, the quality of an ISP's PoP infrastructure becomes far more critical.
"While we weren't facing any particular issues in terms of performance, our PoP equipment was nearing the end of its service life and its lack of scalability was going to have a serious impact going forward," said Stavros Patiniotis, founder and managing director of EscapeNet. "Ideally, we were looking for a complete replacement that could cope with 500 percent growth over the next five years, while also being cost-effective to deploy and operate."
Working with ASI Solutions, Brocade's long-standing partner in Australia, EscapeNet focused in on Brocade carrier-class Ethernet routers and switches, which are purpose-built for efficient service delivery at the network edge. Running the same Brocade Multi-Service IronWare® operating system as the large-scale Brocade MLXe Core Routers, the Brocade NetIron® CER 2000 Routers and NetIron CES 2000 Switches give EscapeNet carrier-class capabilities and reliability in a single-rack-space form factor.
"The Brocade NetIron CER 2000 routers and CES 2000 switches are designed to deliver maximum performance and advanced capabilities in the smallest footprint, with industry-leading operational economy," said Greig Guy, Country Manager Australia and New Zealand, Brocade. "For EscapeNet, which operates in a highly competitive market that equates to reduced operational cost-per customer and the ability to offer value-added services to NBN-connected sites."
Both the Brocade NetIron CER 2000 and CES 2000 platforms are being deployed with 48 wire-speed 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and 136 Gbps of forwarding capacity, with additional 10 GbE ports for uplinks to EscapeNet's MPLS core network. With the advanced traffic-engineering feature of the IronWare operating system, EscapeNet has much more granular quality-of-service management capabilities, making it easier to offer premium service level agreements to business customers and enabling the ISP to roll out new Layer 2 virtual leased line services.
"You really have to admire the Brocade equipment. You benefit from high-performance service capability in one rack unit, with the routers versatile enough to simultaneously fulfill the role of a border gateway and MPLS cross-connect. It is also very cost-effective, enabling us to save money while delivering better performance. We have been able to improve our response to customer requests for new services, virtual leased lines being a case in point," said Patiniotis.
Going forward, EscapeNet will also be able to leverage the support for software-defined networking (SDN) built into the Brocade NetIron CER 2000 and CES 2000 Series. SDN is a powerful new network paradigm that provides increased agility and programmatic control of network infrastructure, enabling a new class of IT applications to meet critical business needs.
