Industry news

Backhaul networks 'restrict ethernet potential'

IT service providers are being held back by the capacity of their backhaul networks, it has been claimed.

According to networking industry support group AFORE Solutions, enterprises should increase the size of these facilities, while ensuring customer data is fully protected.

Jonathan Reeves, chairman and chief strategy officer at the group, said: "While ethernet has become the technology of choice for service provider networks, the access and metro backhaul networks are still capacity constrained."

The organisation added that it is launching a product aimed at improving the performance and security of ethernet wide area networks while providing low latency and protocol transparency able to deal with sensitive traffic such as packetised voice and pseudowire applications.

Earlier this week, Simon Crosby, chief technology officer at enterprise software company Citrix, claimed the emergence of bandwidth-intensive applications and the continued adoption of virtualisation by IT managers require architecture able to provide higher network speeds.