Product assessment reports provide a timely and in-depth evaluation on how leading products and services in a market measure up to their competition. Updated regularly by our industry-leading analysts, product assessment reports deliver an objective and un-biased look at a product's strengths and weaknesses, ratings on how well the product meets specific customer buying criteria, and relevant product metrics. Compare selected products with side-by-side listings of product metrics and other factors, with a focus on actionable intelligence. Click here to find out how you can get access to Telecom Equipment Buyer.

Alcatel-Lucent 7302 ISAM
In 2011, Alcatel-Lucent surpassed the 240 million DSL ports shipped benchmark and expanded the service capabilities of its ISAM series again, incorporating support for both board and system-level vectoring, as it strives for market leadership. (1/3/2012)
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ECI Telecom Hi-FOCuS 5
ECI Telecom, after notable achievements in 2010, including a big FTTx customer win with BT Openreach, followed by the debut of its new flagship OLT platform, had a quiet 2011, yet did reasonably well in terms of fixed access port shipments. (1/3/2012)
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Ericsson EDA 1200
Ericsson’s EDA 1200 remains the most incrementally scalable DSLAM systems available on the market, and offers a myriad of configuration options, but Ericsson’s presence in the global DSL market remains limited vis-à-vis the Big Three. (1/3/2012)
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Huawei SmartAX MA5600T
In 2011, Huawei solidified its leadership of the DSL and overall fixed access market, on the strength of its flagship MA5600T platform and its compelling price/performance proposition, which only Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE can come close to matching. (1/6/2012)
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Nokia Siemens Networks SURPASS hiX 5635
Nokia Siemens Networks has targeted the FTTx/IP DSLAM sector exclusively since exiting the GPON market in 2008. While the hiX 5635 and other NSN FTTx solutions are compelling, the company has slipped to fifth overall in the global DSL market. (4/11/2011)
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UTStarcom iAN8K Series
UTStarcom, primarily due to its success in India, is still a tangible presence in the global DSL access market. After a drastic restructuring and relocation (to Beijing) in 2010, will it survive in the acutely competitive fixed access space? (1/3/2012)
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Zhone MALC
Zhone’s MALC series offers both the highest subscriber port scalability and lowest throughput capacity in this comparison. Operators looking for a high-capacity, fiber-optimized solution will look to Zhone’s new fixed access flagship, the MXK. (1/3/2012)
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ZTE FSAP 9800 Series
ZTE’s FSAP 9800 has played an instrumental role in enabling the company to steadily grow its presence in the global DSL market to become one of the Big Three vendors in fixed access, thanks to a very hard-to-beat price/performance proposition. (1/3/2012)
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Top

• Current Analysis Perspective
• Product Strengths & Weaknesses
• Product Point and Counterpoint
• Product Buying Criteria
• Product Metrics

• Scalability
  • Scalability is the capability of a system to expand to meet growing needs of users or service providers. This can be viewed in terms of port density and usually references capacity in either a single chassis or a 7' rack.
• DSL Standards
  • Different 'flavors' of DSL support different services and thus define what markets service providers are targeting. ADSL is typically targeted at consumer services, while HDSL and SDSL services are usually targeted at enterprise or small-to-medium business users.
• QoS Support
  • The type of quality of service a system supports directly impacts the ability to support performance-sensitive applications such as video and voice.
• Price
  • Price reflects the equipment cost of interfacing a user, or community of users, to the switch and is usually expressed in terms of price per DSL port.
  Backplane Capacity/Throughput
  
  

• Port Density Per 7' Rack
  • The number of DSL ports in a standard 7-foot tall (or 84") telecom Central Office rack. (See NEBS compliance section below.) The DSL port density per rack defines the total number of physical connections a rack will support, calculated by the number of systems that can be fit into a typical 7' rack.
• Maximum Ports via Subtend
  • The total number of DSL ports in a single system, also known as a network element. Subtending is simply the linking of chassis (and racks) together. This metric indicates how many total DSL ports can be managed as a single network element.
• DSL Flavors Supported
  • Digital Subscriber Line technologies, all with different speed and reach capabilities. ADSL = Asymmetric; DMT = Discreet Multi Tone ADSL; G.Lite = splitterless ADSL; G.shdsl = Symmetric High-Speed; HDSL = High-Speed (Symmetric, 1.5 to 2 Mbps, over 4 wires); HDSL2 = same as HDSL over 2 wires; IDSL = Integrated (ISDN 2B1Q coding, 144 Kbps over 1 copper pair); SDSL = Symmetric, up to 768 Kbps; VDSL = Very High Speed, up to 52 Mbps speed).
• List Price Per Port
  • Price, in U.S. dollars, per DSL port.
• Card Port Density
  • The number of ports on a single line card. The greater number of ports on a card, typically the lower the price per port the system will offer. Number of ports per cards also directly impacts the port density of a chassis.
• Port Density Per Chassis
  • The number of DSL ports in a chassis. The DSL port density defines the total number of physical connections a system will support. Each physical connection, however, can support numerous logical connections, thus maximum number of DSL ports may not reflect total number of subscribers a system can support.
• Network Interfaces
  • The type of interfaces through which the DSLAM connects to the WAN, other DSLAMs (in subtended configurations), Gateways, Switches, or network management systems. The type of network interface a system supports generally defines the range of speeds that the system can support.
• Transport Protocol
  • The underlying transport used by switch fabric for data transport in the DSLAM; sometimes "backplane architecture.
• PVC/SVC Support
  • Permanent Virtual Circuits/Switched Virtual Circuits. PVCs are predetermined paths through the network that must be set up by network operators, while SVCs are paths through the network that can be automatically setup by the user, thus offering a greater degree of connection flexibility without overburdening operational systems.
• QoS Rates
  • ATM Quality of service bit rates. ABR = Available, CBR = Constant, VBR = Variable, UBR = Unspecified; GFR = Guaranteed Frame Rate. The -rt and -nrt suffixes stand for real time and non-real time. The type of quality of service a system supports directly impacts its ability to support performance sensative applications such as video and voice.
• VCCs/VPCs Supported
  • Virtual Circuit Connections/Virtual Path Connection. This is the ATM equivelent to PVC/SVC support. The number indicates the how many different user sessions or destinations can be simultaneously supported by this system.
• Redundancy
  • Indicates ability of specific components of DSLAM (CPUs, fans, line cards, switching fabric, power supply) to continue to function in event of failure. The level of redundancy a system supports directly impacts the 'availablity' of a system, usually expressed as a percentage: 99.999%. In order to reach 'five nines' reliability, a system needs to offer complete redundancy of its power, disk, interface, backplane, and processing components.
• Chassis Dimensions
  • Physical measurements of single DSLAM chassis in inches. Note: Chassis exceeding 19" width and/or 12" depth do not meet NEBs Level 3 Telco rack requirements. Chassis dimensions determine how many systems can fit into an equipment rack (in addition to power and cooling constraints).
• Backplane Capacity
  • Usually measured in Gigabits per second (Gbps), an indicator of total data throughput. This parameter is a key factor in the overall scalability of the system in question, and defines how much data or voice traffic can be switched from one card in the system to another, in aggregate.
• Slots (for Cards, Total)
  • The number of slots in a chassis for line cards and switch fabric modules. The more slots available in a system to accept either processor or interface cards, generally the greater the scalability of the system. More card slots mean the ability to support more ports or greater processing power to enable more applications.
• Customers
  • Customers are the ultimate validation of a product's competitiveness and readiness for deployment.
• Standards Compliance
  • Network Equipment Building Standards for central offices; formerly BellCore, now Telcordia, Level 3 standards for chassis maximum dimensions, power requirements, temperature hardening, etc. NEBS compliance and certification is required for installation of network equipment in a regulated carrier's central office, but is also an indication of compliance with safety and operational requirements.
• Availability
  • Date that the product was/is available to customers. Availability of the system can be several months after the initial product announcement, thus this date indicates how 'real' the product is or how long it has been available on the market.