Carrier Ethernet

Effective and reliable communications are important for any business, but when your productivity and profitability rely solely on your ability to communicate effectively, the rules of the game quickly change. For Bay Street 1861, Carrier Ethernet is a critical technology to have in place to assure consistent capability and support for the trading floor.

As captured in this RAD Data Communications’ (News - Alert) video, Bay Street is a provider of British Telecom trading floor systems. The company was founded in 2007 as a result of a need in Toronto to accommodate the BT (News - Alert) products and networks working with point-to-point customers.

According to Fred Peliti, president of The WAN Group Inc., Bay Street came to them for help in addressing the high cost of T1 trunks lines between turrets for their clients. RAD was considered an optimal partner to help address Bay Street’s Carrier Ethernet requirements.

Traders at Bay Street have specific lines like an intercom and will use the interface to immediately transfer from one call to another, keeping all calls live. The RAD Carrier Ethernet product is used to provide the circuits across the bandwidth point-to-point.

The WAN Group proposed a TDM over IP app with redundancy and backup integration built in. Some of the early challenges were the integration of the redundancy creating a failover system that was fast, reliable and consistent. With the RAD Megaplex 4100 solution, they were able to accomplish this goal and enjoy the integration of a Carrier Ethernet solution that provided more of a competitive advantage.

Garry Ng, network engineer for Bay Street 1861, noted that “from the beginning, RAD was great in coming up and giving up hands-on training on the RAD gear. They are always prompt and always responsive to our requests. The support team is great in supplying ongoing support.”

According to Allan Miles, vice president of Bay Street, the typical trader can handle 27 conversations on each turret, simultaneously. Multiple that by 300 and 400 turrets per floor and you can have up to 2000 and 3000 circuits at each trading system. These circuits always have to be on, there can’t be any echo and no relay. The RAD Carrier Ethernet equipment takes the Ethernet layer 2 LAN and converts it at the customer end-point to a TDM T1 endpoint technology.

Back in the core location, there is an MP4100 that receives the full T1 as an Ethernet pseudo wire technology and converts it to a T1 and allows individual DS zeros and allows point-to-point technology around the pseudo wire technology.

As a result, the customer can stay on a T1 analog service and leverage the packet network in terms of flexibility and scalability. Both services can be kept economically and deliver to customers at the end of the day.

RAD has been there for them 24x7, even on the weekend, said Ng. The cost benefit allows the company to grow in increments, saving money along the way.