Now Shipping - Patton's EFM Equipment For Carriers, Enterprises

Patton, a provider of business and carrier-class VoIP, network access, connectivity, and video surveillance equipment, is now shipping the RocketLink Model 3202 G.SHDSL Ethernet-in-the-First-Mile (EFM) modem for carriers, service providers and enterprises.

Since Patton began taking orders in September, service providers have been installing the RocketLink EFM CPE on customer premises in order to roll out broadband Ethernet services to businesses, governments, schools and other organisations.

"Inquiries are coming from all sorts of customers," said Johnnie Grant, EFM product manager at Patton, "from clean transmission environments -- like business LAN extension -- to noisy railway car applications."

"The product preserves capital investment," Grant adds. "With Patton's EFM modem, operators can use the infrastructure they already have to deliver new, revenue-generating services."

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By leveraging pre-installed bundles of twisted-pair cable to deliver first-mile broadband network access, Patton's EFM Network Termination Unit (NTU) eliminates the trouble and expense of installing fibre-optic cable.

"Service providers like the 3202," Grant explains, "because they can offer premium high-speed symmetrical data services to customers they couldn't reach with older G.SHDSL equipment."

Using Ethernet-over-SHDSL (EoSHDSL), the RocketLink 3202 extends connections up to 1.6 miles/ 2.6km at symmetrical nx64 rates up to 22.8 Mbps. The device employs EFM Bonding to combine up to four copper pairs (eight wires) into a single communications channel.

"Today's carriers are eager to connect business customers to their metro networks," Grant observes, "and EFM is the key standard that makes this migration easier. ADSL2 is an inexpensive long-reach technology, but it's asymmetrical. VDSL2 is fast but has very limited distances, especially in symmetrical configurations."

Patton's model 3202 G.SHDSL.bis EFM (also known as 2Base-TL) CPE is compliant with ITU-T G.991.2 and IEEE 802.3ah and offers the reliability of Ethernet connectivity with good rate and reach.

With an on-board four-port fast-Ethernet switch with QoS, CoS and VLAN (802.1q), the RocketLink 3202 supports four levels of traffic priorities, flow control and rate control.