Bay Networks Inc – the new name for what used to be Wellfleet Communications Inc and SynOptics Communications Inc – has announced the incorporation of a native Integrated Services Digital Network Basic Rate Interface into the Wellfleet Access Stack Node and remote site Access Node. Designed to replace external ISDN terminal adaptors, it provides two 64Kbps B-channels for data, and one 16Kbps D-channel for signalling. The company claims that each B-channel is separately addressable by the router, enabling a single Basic Rate Interface to maintain dial up connections to two remote locations. Different versions are available with various country-specific signalling compatibilities, although surprisingly, the initial release does not support US, Canadian, and Australian standards. Interfaces for these countries will follow next spring. This, says the company, is because most of the demand for the product is from Europe and Japan. In its initial incarnation, the Basic Rate Interface supports data compression over Point-to-Point Protocol, but the company says that it plans to support X.25 and Frame Relay: these will be added towards the middle of next year. Calling line identification is also supported, as is the Challenge Hand-shake Authentication Protocol for Point-to-Point Protocol. Bay Networks also says it plans to support high-density ISDN Basic Rate Interface, and Primary Rate Interface on the Backbone Concentrator Node, Backbone Link Node and Access Stack Node routers, although no timescale was given. On the Backbone Node, the company says it will provide two Primary Rate Interface per board, enabling up to 58 channels per slot in the US and 60 channels in Europe. There is no word as yet on the pricing.
