Ethernet Over SDH Verses Ether Point to Point Though both products product the same result, i.e.

an Ethernet circuit from point A to point B, the way the circuits are constructed and the technology utilised allows for different resilience and monitoring capabilities. The Ether Point to Point product offered by NTL is comparable to BT LES and is a direct fibre lin from point A to point B. This fibre is patch across !arious hub sites that are located between the two sites, but no acti!e it is utilised at these locations. The only acti!e it are the two bo"es placed at either ends of the circuit#. $ne of these bo"es has a BEL line attached that allows NTL to monitor the circuits. This product allows for a cheap fast ser!ice, but there is no resilience at all. Loss of ser!ice can occur at any point on the circuit, from the %PE at the customer end, to a cable brea at any point on the circuit. The Ether o!er S&' product utilises different technologies that allow for a much more resilient ser!ice. To the customer, they are presented with an Ethernet connection from the %PE at the customer premises. This bo" has a direct fibre connection to the nearest NTL hub site. At this hub site, the signal is con!erted to the S&' framing standard, and is then sent around our S&' networ . As our S&' networ is made up of rings, the signal is split, and different parts are sent in different directions, until they meet at the hub site nearest to point B. At this hub site, the pac ets are reassembled into Ethernet presentation and sent to the customers site. The main benefit of this ser!ice is that greater distances can be reached, and a fault of the S&' networ will not mean a loss of ser!ice as if a brea occurs, the signal will loop around in the other direction. Below is an e"tract from one of the technical clarification documents from the tendering process that e"plains in detail the S&' Technology.

Ethernet Over SDH Ethernet o!er S&' is a natural de!elopment from Transmission suppliers to meet the current demand for wire speed bandwidths o!er e"isting legacy S&' networ s. (n essence supplying )ncontended *anaged Pri!ate Ethernet Leased Lines mapped across an S&' bac bone. The ad!antages of using S&' are end+to+end networ management, full diagnostic capability, fault monitoring and statistical performance reporting. The presentation of the Ethernet circuit is #,BASE+T-#,,BASE+T. configurable interfaces, which are auto sensing / auto negotiating. There are 0 !ariants of Ethernet $!er S&' card, which fit in to a standard S&' mutiple"er. $ptical Electrical Both cards ha!e a similar basic board configuration and functionality with the e"ception of the Ethernet interfaces, with the electrical card ha!ing 1234 interfaces and the optical ha!ing S5P6s 7small form factor pluggable optics8. The optical card will e"tend the circuit to the customers premises !ia an EPE 7Ethernet port E"tender8, which will then pro!ide an 12 34 #,BASE+T-#,,BASE+T. e"tended to the customer site 7*a" 3, m8. The EPE also e"tends the full range S&' benefits to the customer site including management, fault diagnostics and performance monitoring. The EPE is managed within a dedicated out of band optical communications channel e"tended from the core multiple"er. The ethernet o!er S&' card is logically split in two domains, an ethernet and an S&' domain. The ethernet domain pro!ides the ethernet framing and lin to the physical card port whilst the S&' domain treats the bac haul circuit as indi!idual 9%+#0, 9%+: or 9%+36s. The Ethernet frame is logically mapped into S&' !irtual containers using ;5P 7;eneric 5raming Procedure8 which forms a !irtually concatenated group 79%;8 of n " 9%+#0, 9%+: or

9%+3. This group is formed in the ethernet domain of the card and is independent from the S&', therefore each 9%+n can be di!ersely routed around the S&' bac bone to pro!ide resilience under fault conditions. The ethernet o!er S&' cards buffer the incoming 9%6s and can handle a differential delay of up to :0ms across the S&' networ . A #,*bit-s 9%; will pro!ide a slightly higher throughput due to management of the group being mapped in administrati!e o!erhead of the frame, this will increase the theoretical throughput of the lin to #,.0*bit-s. (f a circuit is re<uired to be upgraded additional 9%=s are allocated across the S&' networ 7di!ersely if re<uired8 L%AS 7;.>,308 will then reshape the circuit throughput accordingly with N$ circuit downtime, this results in NTL deli!ered circuits re<uiring no access to the %PE site. The circuit can be upgraded in increments of 0*bit-s therefore we can offer upgrade to any bandwidth between #, + #,,*bit-s ie #,, #0, #3, 0,, :, etc.