CENX, EXFO to deploy industry’s first off-net SLA monitoring for carrier Ethernet services

LOS ANGELES, USA: CENX Inc., the operator of the world’s first and most connected Carrier Ethernet exchange with more than 10 million accessible Ethernet Service Locations (ESLs), announced the industry’s first deployment of off-net service-level SLA monitoring for Carrier Ethernet services.

The new monitoring service is a result of a collaborative partnership between CENX and EXFO, a leading provider of test and service assurance solutions for network operators. This new capability yields compelling advantages for service providers interconnecting via a CENX exchange.

Previously, when a service provider needed service-level SLA monitoring to off-net locations via a partner network, their practical choices were to (i) “run blind,” with no ability to measure, alarm and report on the Ethernet service quality to these off-net locations or (ii) deploy expensive, customer premises monitoring equipment at each of these off-net locations.

This latter approach also required high ongoing costs as the service provider needed to put in place mechanisms to deploy, spare and repair this equipment for all off-net locations on a global basis.

Now, when a service provider chooses to reach off-net ESLs via a CENX exchange, a much more elegant and cost-effective mechanism is available. With the integration of EXFO’s scalable and flexible service assurance technology, the CENX System proactively monitors each Ethernet virtual connection (EVC) from the CENX exchange to the off-net Ethernet Service Locations.

EXFO’s BrixNGN Carrier Ethernet Service Assurance System utilizes a scalable vendor-agnostic methodology to monitor any EVC regardless of the type of vendor equipment at the demarcation points. This enables constant, normalized measurement of the performance of each service against its SLA criteria.

The monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are gathered centrally and analyzed to provide both real-time notification of service degradation beyond preset thresholds and historical SLA reports. Buyers and sellers of the monitored EVC can securely access this information in a normalized form (i.e., consistent across the different seller networks) either via the CENX Market web interface or via open APIs directly into their operational support systems (OSS).

“This partnership with EXFO represents a significant breakthrough in the industry. It allows a service provider to deliver an on-net experience for their off-net customer locations without the huge cost overhead of deploying additional monitoring equipment,” said Nan Chen, president of CENX. “Best-in-class monitoring is a key element of CENX’s strategy, which enables and supports all elements of Carrier Ethernet services via our exchanges.”

“This is a very exciting development both for EXFO and for the industry,” said Vivian Hudson, GM, EXFO Service Assurance.

“We believe that the combination of EXFO’s recognized leadership and CENX’s innovative Carrier Ethernet exchanges create a new level of worldwide neutral, standards-based and vendor-agnostic measured services providing enhanced end-to-end Ethernet performance visibility that is key to the success of service providers in this growing market.”