Cisco Systems Inc. unleashed a flurry of residential broadband access and IPTV-related news. That included the introduction of a FTTH access solution for multitenant buildings. Cisco also today unveiled a carrier Ethernet troubleshooting tool.

    Along with this new product news, the company also announced it can now deliver SONET-like 50ms resiliency from the network core to customer premises, end-to-end IPTV visibility and service assurance, and has received independent validation on the scalability of its IP NGN Carrier Ethernet Design and Cisco Video Quality Experience technology from the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC).

    The MTU FTTH solution is called the ME 3400-24FS. The carrier Ethernet troubleshooting tool is called the Embedded Event Manager. It is an IOS feature included in many of Cisco’s higher-end solutions and sold as an adjunct to its lower-end solutions. This can allow service providers to proactively address unanticipated network problems. For example, a service provider can use the event manager to monitor CPU utilization and if it goes over a certain threshold, the event manager sets certain processes into motion to address the event before it adversely affects service.

    As for the EANTC, that test loaded the carrier Ethernet network with 1 million emulated subscribers, 200 standard definition channels, 20 high definition channels and showed “excellent performance and rapid network failure recovery,” according to Cisco. “The test for VQE focused on video error repair resulting in perfect and consistent video quality even with 10 percent packet loss. This is a 10-times improvement over DSL alone,” according to Cisco.