Accedian Networks SkyLIGHT shines on performance assurance

Accedian Networks has unveiled a performance assurance software platform called SkyLIGHT that it says provides the benefits of software-defined networking (SDN) to mobile backhaul applications. SkyLIGHT is designed to support real-time optimization of mobile backhaul performance, even in a multi-vendor network.

SkyLIGHT comprises three main standards-based elements:

1. Performance Assurance Elements, software agents that can also take the form of miniaturized network devices or performance-assured network elements.
2. Performance Assurance Nodes that are actuators that mediate and aggregate performance assurance sessions from the Performance Assurance Elements with the ability to scale in a virtualized manner.
3. The Performance Assurance Software Platform, which is the overall reporting platform. It includes a cloud-based portal and a cloud-based app that provides an API towards SDN and SON controllers.
   

To ensure a multivendor capability, Accedian says it has secured partnerships with “most major base-station vendors,” according to a press release. The company also is part of Cyan’s recently announced Blue Orbit SDN ecosystem (see “Cyan targets Blue Orbit multivendor ecosystem at SDN”).

“While user demand for data bandwidth is growing exponentially, spectrum is a finite resource and wireless backhaul remains a bottleneck. This creates an acute need for dynamic optimization, and Performance Assured SDN is the perfect technology to address these issues,” said Patrick Ostiguy, president and CEO of Accedian Networks, via the press release. “We believe that by assuring and optimizing the performance of backhaul networks, both mobile operators and service providers can bring to their customers, the reliability they need and the ever faster data bandwidth they crave – this is why we created SkyLIGHT.”

Accedian will offer SkyLIGHT as a service as well as a standalone product. The latter configuration is likely to be the most popular, Ostiguy told Lightwave in an interview last week. The new offering should prove useful in current mobile backhaul networks and also in emerging small cell infrastructure, he added.

Accedian should begin rolling out SkyLIGHT by the end of this year, Ostiguy said. Field trials of the technology are under way, he revealed.

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