8 July 2003 Tel Aviv--The National Company of Romanian Railways (CFR), the fourth largest railway network in Europe, with over 14,000 km of track, has installed more than USD1 million worth of RAD Data Communications' Multiservice Access Platform and Last Mile solutions in over 400 train stations.
CFR's network is divided into eight sectors. In each sector, a Cisco router connects to a RAD DXC Multiservice Access Node, which grooms the data from each site in the sector. A variety of other RAD devices, such as Megaplex multiplexers, FCD Network Termination Units, HTU access units and ASMi intelligent modems, is installed at the various sites.
To improve its customer service and boost profits, CFR has developed an Integrated Railway Information System (IRIS). The main target of this information technology system is to assist the operational, tactical and strategic management for the railway, in the areas of ticketing, rolling stock maintenance, and traffic planning and monitoring.
CFR installed a fibre optic infrastructure for high data rate Ethernet transmissions between stations. All stations communicate with CFR's Management Information Center, located in Bucharest, which processes the information. IRIS also provides high speed intranet and Internet access.
"RAD's leased line solutions made the most sense for this network, due to the wide range of interoperating products that enabled us to put the optimal device at each site," stated Mihai Gherman of ICL (Fujitsu), the international, Romania-based system integrator for the project. The RAD products fulfilled all the needs of the IRIS system, including interoperability with Cisco routers, central management support and system redundancy.
"We considered implementing a modems-based configuration proposed by Telindus, but for larger sites we needed a multiplexer solution," Gherman continued. "We also considered a proposal from Cisco based on Frame Relay, X.25 and IP networks, but TDM, with its consistent bandwidth, proved the most appropriate technology in this particular application."