Stockholm // 2007-05-29

Swedish Urban Network Association favors PacketFront's ASR series routers

PacketFront's ASR series routers (Advanced Services Router) easily met the requirements established by the Swedish Urban Network Association (SSNf) for secure urban networks in the SKA project. SSNf's testing director, Torbjörn Eklöv gave them an A.

PacketFront is the pioneer in open access broadband networking and a market leader in fiber to the home (FTTH) technology. The Swedish Urban Network Association's SKA quality project (which is an acronym of a Swedish phrase meaning “Secure Customer Connection”) was initiated by SSNf and the Swedish Postal and Telecom Agency in order to conduct the quality assurance of products that provide end users with a secure connection to the broadband network. This project resulted from the many Swedish urban networks that were built lacking adequate basic security. Despite anti-virus protection and firewalls, there was a risk of man-in-the-middle attacks and spoofing, which give rise to problems such as bugging, hijacking and redirection of traffic. Thanks to SKA-approved products, the broadband network is considered protected from currently known problems.

“We were sure that the ASR series would pass the tests,” says Niclas Sonesson, CTO at PacketFront. “Our broadband solution with its BECS control and provisioning system, and the ASR series routers were designed and developed from their inception to be used in broadband networks. That's why these safety parameters have always been included."

“We are pleased to see that more and more suppliers are supporting our vision of increasing the quality of urban networks,” says Ulf Borbos, the Chairman of SSNf. “New, ever larger, urban networks are being built all the time, which means that unnecessary problems are affecting many more users. That's why it's a good idea for major suppliers, such as PacketFront, to take the initiative of testing their solutions as part of the SKA project."

ASR is PacketFront's series of broadband routers to which the end-users' Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) is connected, either through fiber networks or copper wire. Recently, the latest in a line of ASR routers, the ASR 5000, was released. This offers unique flexibility in supporting future broadband network functions, as well as various standards and protocol requirements. Thanks to the high level of hardware performance and capacity, the software can be upgraded to support future demands for advanced functions. This is significantly more cost-efficient than having to replace all the hardware.

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