Empowered Networks

SynCan 2010 was held in Toronto, at the Westin Harbour Castle, overlooking Toronto Harbour.  Thanks to all who invested their valuable time to make our 8th annual SynCan another great success.   To access the session notes and information distributed to those who attended, please register here.

Overview
SynCan 2010 was the 8th annual Canadian Users Meeting, hosted by Symmetricom and Empowered Networks.  As in previous years, attendees included key representatives of the telecom, wireless and utility telecom marketplace in Canada.

Highlights
Some highlights from SynCan 2010, and attendee feedback:

• Empowered’s Glen Emo opened up SynCan with lessons learned from Aloha Flight 243, drawing a parallel between the life expectancy of short-hop aircraft, and the legacy sync gear deployed in networks across Canada, now at or beyond End-of-Life
• Material progress of standards around Telecom Synchronization, especially the IEEE 1588-2008 standard (aka. Precision Time Protocol or PTP), and Synchronous Ethernet (aka. SyncE)
• Peter Roberts of Alcatel-Lucent highlighted the importance of PTP and SyncE to equipment manufacturers, and their solutions for Carrier Networks, and Services
• Legacy Upgrade Programs generated lots of discussion around both the challenges highlighted by Rob Hockin, and the help our team can provide.  Some attendees have programs in place – other recognize the urgent need to get such programs underway.
• The importance of sync to Power Utilities was an eye-opener for many attendees.  The developing Smart Grid will make sync even more important.
• Attendees said their key priorities in Sync for 2010 ranged from modernizing existing Sync infrastructure, to testing and deploying PTP solutions.
• There’s an evident need to concisely explain the importance of Sync to others. We’re presently working on a related initiative, and will share the results on this soon.
• Attendee feedback strongly reflected that SynCan was an excellent learning opportunity
• The venue for the group dinner was excellent – The views from the 38th floor, overlooking the islands of Toronto Harbour, the landing path for Island Airport, and as night fell, the Toronto skyline was a highlight.
• Our sincere thanks to Symmetricom for their generous support of SynCan 2010

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