Cisco rolls out Long Reach Ethernet products

by Jim Duffy

February 20, 2001 —

Cisco last week unveiled products that let users extend Ethernet up to 5,000 feet over existing voice-grade copper cabling.

The products are aimed at the burgeoning broadband multitenant building market in which landlords can act as service provisioning brokers by offering high-speed Internet access to tenants or guests as part of their lease or length-of-stay agreement.

The products can also be used in factories, healthcare facilities and schools where rewiring with fiber or higher quality copper would be cost-prohibitive.

The new products include two switches, a customer premises equipment (CPE) device to connect phones and computers to telephone wiring, and a splitter for separating voice and data traffic from the same wire. The products also include a Windows NT server running subscriber management software obtained from Cisco's acquisition of the broadband subscriber management business of CAIS Software Solutions last year.

The products use Cisco's Long Reach Ethernet (LRE) technology, which pumps Ethernet over very-high bit rate DSL on Category 1, 2 and 3 single-pair copper wiring. LRE can achieve rates from 5M to 15M bit/sec at distances up to 5,000 feet, Cisco says.

It also lets voice and data share the same wire, the company says. The upshot is LRE lets users extend Ethernet over long distances without the expense and disruption of pulling new fiber or Category 5 copper cabling, Cisco says.

The switches are the Catalyst LRE XL and the 2912 LRE XL. They sport 24 and 12 RJ-21 ports, respectively, as well as four 10/100M bit/sec RJ-45 Ethernet ports. These switches connect to servers, such as the NT subscriber management server acquired from CAIS; to Cisco's new plain old telephone service (POTS) splitters; and to other Catalyst switches, such as those used for Ethernet aggregation, in a building's main wiring closet.

The switches support speeds of 5M bit/sec up to 5,000 feet, 10M bit/sec up to 4,000 feet and 15M bit/sec up to 3,500 feet.

"We can finally affect a 10M bit/sec connection to any hotel room regardless of the topology of the wiring architecture," says Jim Thompson, CTO at Wayport, an Austin, Texas, service provider for the hospitality industry. "About two-thirds of the hotel plant out there tends to have unrated or nonnetwork [capable] cabling."

The CPE device is called the Cisco 575 CPE, and it functions like a DSL modem. It sits on a desktop next to a phone and computer and sports two RJ-11 ports for line input and telephone, and a single RJ-45 for a 10/100 Ethernet connection. The CPE lets users dial into the Internet from their laptops and into the public switched telephone network to conduct simultaneous voice and data calls on the same wire.

The POTS splitter is called the Cisco LRE 48. It provides connectivity between the LRE switches and a building's PBX. It sports 48 ports for aggregating 575 CPE links and six RJ-21 ports -- two each for connectivity to a patch panel, Catalyst 2900 LRE XL switches and an on-site PBX. The POTS splitter takes up one rack unit in a wiring closet.

The NT server running CAIS Software's IPORT software is not a new product. Cisco says there are 1,200 to 1,300 installations out there.

But the company renamed it the Cisco Building Broadband Service Manager (BBSM) after closing the CAIS acquisition early last week.

BBSM registers and provisions network service based on the guest or tenant profile. It offers bandwidth throttling for efficiency and congestion avoidance, a Web portal for local service, content and advertising specific to the guest, tenant or organization, and integration with hotel billing systems for network usage chargebacks.

Still, Wayport's Thompson says Cisco's LRE offering is a little expensive. "As with all things, I think the pricing has to come down a little bit," he says.

The LRE XL switches cost $6,495 for the 24-port version and $3,295 for the 12-port model. The CPE devices cost $280, and the POTS splitter costs $1,395. All products will ship in April.

Network World